Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The quality or state of cohering, especially a logical, orderly, and aesthetically consistent relationship of parts.
- n. Physics The property of being coherent, as of waves.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act or state of cohering; a sticking or cleaving of one thing to another, or of parts of the same body to each other, or a cleaving together of two bodies, as by the force of attraction.
- n. Suitable connection or dependence, proceeding from the natural relation of parts or things to each other, as in the parts of a discourse or of any system; consistency.
- n. In mathematics See adherence, 6.
Wiktionary
- n. Quality of cohering; of being coherent; internal consistency.
- n. a logical arrangements of parts
- n. physics the property of having the same wavelength and phase.
- n. linguistics Semantic relationship between different parts of the same text.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A sticking or cleaving together; union of parts of the same body; cohesion.
- n. Connection or dependence, proceeding from the subordination of the parts of a thing to one principle or purpose, as in the parts of a discourse, or of a system of philosophy; a logical and orderly and consistent relation of parts; consecutiveness.
- n. the state of cohering.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the state of cohering or sticking together
- n. logical and orderly and consistent relation of parts
Etymologies
- From Middle French coherence, from Latin cohaerentia. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“I think the total lack of coherence from the administartion shows that Bush is right.”
“Kevin Starr said, “You would need a coherent political culture for such a session to occur” — and the lack of such coherence is exactly the problem — “otherwise it would turn into a food fight from Animal House.””
“That our society has an interest in coherence and strength and commitment and mutually reinforcing loyalties, then if gay couples want to call their union marriage and a state agrees, and several have now, or a religious body will sanction it - and I don't think the state should be able to stop the religious bodies from saying it - I don't think the rest of us should get in the way of that.”
“But still: I like a coherent narrative thread, and so far as coherence is possible in personal narratives, why not pursue it?”
“Many of the books are a little slow to start and occasionally the story is a bit lacking in coherence, but those are just minor annoyances.”
“I suspect that desire for respect is as genetically hard-wired into us as the ostracism of outsiders; the tribe needs to maintain coherence, but the outsider needs to get closer to the fire.”
MIND MELD: What You Should Know About Speculative Fiction and Mainstream Acceptance (Part 1)
“Self-coherence is the key quality by which Clute distinguishes fantasy from the fantastic, projecting the notion of story onto that of narrative.”
“BUT if cultural coherence is the problem then this is obviously true ....”
“Its coherence is evident; it is too lovely and lucid to be frustrating or dull.”
“Expecting any coherence from the tinfoil hat wearing brigade is a waste of time.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘coherence’.
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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Waves and Waveforms
wave, brainwave, soliton, traveling wave, tidal wave, transverse wave, capillary wave, cats' paws, alpha wave, light wave, microwave, acoustic wave and 314 more...
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SCIE - statistics
a priori probability, Abbe-Helmert crit..., absolute error, absolutely unbias..., accuracy, ACF, affinity, AIC, algorithm, allometry, alphabet, anomic and 4171 more...
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EU Buzz - EN words misused by the EU
A list based on http://ec.europa.eu/translation/english/guidelines/document...
actor, actual, adequate, agenda, agent, aids, allow, anglo-saxon, articulate, assist, axis, attestation and 77 more...
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EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...health, follow, condition, meeting, minister, beginning, chapter, information, language, remain, covered, respect and 2614 more...
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connexion
link, joining, junction, concatenation, hookup, isthmus, ligament, articulation, node, tie, relation, intersection and 86 more...
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Words of Science
Your Favorite Words Pertaining to Science.
gravity, constant, interference, velocity, coherence, mass, volume, anatomy, astronomy, cosmology, cosmic microwave ..., cell and 14 more...
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ESL Academic Word List
This is a list of academic words for students learning English as a Second or Foreign Language. It includes 570 word families that often appear in academic texts. It does not include words that are...
collapse, depression, colleagues, invoked, levy, nonetheless, likewise, so-called, ongoing, conceived, forthcoming, integrity and 558 more...
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Some new Wordie words this week
Don't tell them they are not real--they might cry.
glover, breakfront, submaximal, criticality, lanoline, mouthy, botheration, metaphorically, metaphase, disavowal, arum, ostentatiously and 162 more...
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INTERP - VOCABULARY
The vocabulary of conference interpreting. I commend this list to those who want to know more about the profession and to those who wish to organize their knowledge about the profession. To aspirin...
retour language, A-language, B-language, C-language, relay language, take sy on relay, language booth, booth meeting, mic, mike, mission, freelance interpr... and 2086 more...
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C this list?
charisma, character, caricature, coven, compliment, choice, collection, cricket, creation, crown, caboodle, camera and 52 more...
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women's experimental writing course
semantics, syntax, parataxis, metonymy, ekphrasis, lyric, subjectivity, objectivity, referant, signifier, conjunctive, phrase and 39 more...
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Emma Jewell's Fancy Words
hone, acoustics, plexus, cacophony, meager, estuary, molecular, coherence, din, audacious, abstract, juxtapose and 9 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for coherence.
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