coherence

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word coherence. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word coherence, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say coherence in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word coherence you have here. The definition of the word coherence will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofcoherence, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
See also: cohérence

English

 coherence on Wikipedia

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle French coherence, from Latin cohaerentia.

Morphologically cohere +‎ -ence.

Pronunciation

  • (file)
  • (file)

Noun

coherence (countable and uncountable, plural coherences)

  1. The quality of cohering, or being coherent; internal consistency.
    His arguments lacked coherence.
    • 1898, Henry James, chapter II, in The Turn of the Screw:
      Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: “That he’s an injury to the others.”
    • 1915, Virginia Woolf, chapter XXII, in The Voyage Out, London: The Hogarth Press, published 1949, →OCLC:
      He would then put down his pencil and stare in front of him, and wonder in what respects the world was different—it had, perhaps, more solidity, more coherence, more importance, greater depth.
  2. The quality of forming a unified whole.
  3. A logical arrangement of parts, as in writing.
    • 2017, Di Zou, James Lambert, “Feedback methods for student voice in the digital age”, in British Journal of Educational Technology, volume 48, number 5, page 1088:
      In a lesson on coherence in academic writing, students engaged in the following discussion on the online platform TodaysMeet.
  4. (physics, of waves) The property of having the same wavelength and phase.
  5. (linguistics, translation studies) A semantic relationship between different parts of the same text.
    Coordinate term: cohesion

Antonyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

References

Middle French

Noun

coherence f (uncountable)

  1. coherence; quality of being internally consistent

Descendants

  • English: coherence
  • French: cohérence