discordance

English

Alternative forms

• discordaunce (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle French discordance.

Noun

discordance (countable and uncountable, plural discordances)

1. A state of being discordant; disagreement, inconsistency.
   • 1832, [Isaac Taylor], chapter XVIII, in Saturday Evening. , London: Holdsworth and Ball, →OCLC:

     There will arise a thousand discordances of opinion.

   • 1859, George Meredith, chapter 15, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC:

     To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight, is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and through them to make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or for ill.

2. Discordance of sounds; dissonance.
3. (genetics) The presence of a specific genetic trait in only one of a set of clones (or identical twins).

Derived terms

Translations

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dis.kɔʁ.dɑ̃s/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

discordance f (plural discordances)

1. discordance

Further reading

• “discordance”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.