Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The quality or condition of being impertinent, especially:
- n. Insolence.
- n. Irrelevance.
- n. An impertinent act or statement.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The condition or quality of being impertinent or irrelevant; the condition of not being appropriate to the matter in hand; irrelevance.
- n. That which is impertinent; that which is irrelevant or out of place, as in speech, writing, or manners.
- n. Conduct unbecoming the person, society, circumstances, etc.; incivility; presumption; forwardness.
- n. In law, matter (especially in a pleading or an affidavit) which is immaterial in substance, and from prolixity or extent is so inconvenient as to render its presence objectionable. Synonyms Pertness, Effrontery, etc. See
impudence . - To treat with impertinence, rudeness, or incivility; affect as with impertinence.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable Lack of pertinence; irrelevance.
- n. countable An instance of this; a moment of being impertinent.
- n. uncountable The fact or character of being out of place; inappropriateness.
- n. insolence.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The condition or quality of being impertinent; absence of pertinence, or of adaptedness; irrelevance; unfitness.
- n. Conduct or language unbecoming the person, the society, or the circumstances; rudeness; incivility.
- n. That which is impertinent; a thing out of place, or of no value.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an impudent statement
- n. the trait of being rude and impertinent; inclined to take liberties
- n. inappropriate playfulness
Etymologies
- French impertinence (Wiktionary)
Examples
“And then with more apologies for what he called his impertinence, he took his leave, and I felt altogether very much pleased and flattered.”
““Much impertinence is hydroscopic,” said the speaker on the translator console.”
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“You think the thing said ‘Much impertinence is hydroscopic’?”
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“I never thought well of her, pretending to drink nothing but water; and with that short, dry way, that I call impertinence; but I never thought she could be so lost till last night!”
“He expressed in strong terms his annoyance at what he called their impertinence, whilst I could not but laugh at his impatience, as well as at the mortification of the unfortunate pedestrians, whose eagerness to see him, I said, was, in my opinion, highly flattering to him.”
Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 4 (of 6) With His Letters and Journals
“Very soon after, this anxiety was tinctured with a feeling more severe; he saw her spoken to negligently by Sir Sedley – he required, after what he had already himself deemed impertinence from the Baronet, that she should have assumed to him a distant dignity; but he perceived, on the contrary, that she answered him with pleasant alacrity, and, when not engaged by Mrs. Berlinton, attended to him, even with distinction.”
“All the Branghtons called to take leave of me; but I will not write a word more about them: indeed I cannot, with any patience, think of that family, to whose forwardness and impertinence is owing all the uneasiness I at this moment suffer!”
Evelina: or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance Into the World
“I call it impertinence," the lady went on, "and very well-grown impertinence too – from a child like that!”
“If someone insults me and I become angry, his impertinence will be the aspect of his behavior that fits the formal object of anger: I only become angry once I construe the person's remark as a slight; the specific nature of my emotion's formal object is a function of my appraisal of the situation.”
“A bold, swelling, arrogant effrontery -- a sort of stark, staring, self-complacent, comfortable, and yet innocent impertinence, which is at once irritating and amusing, aggravating and attractive, and which is exhibited in the greatest intensity in the whisky-john.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘impertinence’.
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Naresh_Special
portent, organically, malicious, sham, olfactory, vertebrates, protuberance, sensilla, flagitious, pleonastic, exiguous, wayward and 102 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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dharma66's list
words that pique my interest either by meaning, pronunciation, or spelling, and words that otherwise tickle my fancy!!
pique, elusive, serendipity, nefarious, redundant, pseudoscientific, obsequious, flack, quandary, impervious, perchance, translucent and 168 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
Advanced Words: Part II
facetious, felicitous, grandiloquent, germane, repatriate, exigency, exculpate, etheral, fatuous, heterogeneous, hiatus, idiosyncrasy and 118 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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nominative case collection
wine stopper, pyre, roster, hamper, moleskin, elastic, pinnacle, facsimile, nook, plonk, contortionist, dismay and 342 more...
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Some Words I Love to Use
arcology, strumpet, crux, confected, pedant, bluestocking, cogitation, incensed, lovecraftian, cygnet, dactyl, adytum and 539 more...
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2011 July
New words
correspondent, promulgate, transgress, trite, ravine, corespondent, contrivance, contrive, expedient, conducive, clairvoyance, difform and 184 more...
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Rita's List of Words
preliminary, rudimentary, stance, conduit, locale, implicit, vicissitude, empirical, repository, apophthegm, apothegm, invariable and 431 more...
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pword
vexatious, verdigris, variegated, diatribe, vicissitude, conflagration, plurality, paragon, charlatan, panacea, sycophant, plenitude and 347 more...
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Words to remember
adventive, affectation, ambiguous, anachronism, anesis, antithetic, apostasy, attenuate, authenticity, autodidact, -fic, bandolier and 146 more...
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Favourites
wither, pallid, evanescent, enamour, discovery, smoky, tempest, pantheon, fatuous, revenant, aquatic, escapist and 92 more...
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lil_grammar_nazi's list
Main list
acerbic, spiteful, vindictive, curmudgeon, dog in the manger, pious, histrionic, unprecedented, bumptious, abscond, abject, accost and 161 more...
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dudu's Words
inevitable, gravel, scorched, oblivious, doze off, grate, gaunt, meritocracy, forensic accountants, proselytize, prolixity, prune and 48 more...
Tweets
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