Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Power of proving or of producing belief; the quality of being highly probable or convincing; force; credibility: as, the cogency of an alleged motive, or of evidence; the cogency of one's arguments or reasoning.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality of being cogent; power of compelling conviction; conclusiveness; force.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state of being cogent; the characteristic or quality of being reasonable and persuasive.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun persuasive relevance
  • noun the quality of being valid and rigorous

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Fforde's disregard for temporal paradox and cogency is uncommon but not unique.

    MIND MELD: The Tricky Trope of Time Travel

  • Arabic, on the other hand, the answer to the question, what is metrically long or short, is exceedingly simple, and flows with stringent cogency from the nature of the Arabic Alphabet.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night

  • It fell in well enough with that love of emotional issues, that want of soberness and want of cogency, which is so characteristic of modern philosophers.

    The Life of Reason

  • His truisms and verbal propositions, his dogmatic assertions and unreal demonstrations, savour more of theology than of political science, while his quasi-mathematical method of reasoning from abstract formulæ, assumed to be axiomatic, gives a deceptive air of exactness and cogency which is apt to be mistaken for sound logic.

    The Rise of the Democracy

  • My purpose has been, not to enable those among you who have paid no attention to these subjects before, to leave this room in a condition to decide upon the validity or the invalidity of the hypothesis of evolution; but I have desired to put before you the principles upon which all hypotheses respecting the history of Nature must be judged; and furthermore, to make apparent the nature of the evidence and the amount of cogency which is to be expected and may be obtained from it.

    American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology

  • My purpose has been, not to enable those among you who have paid no attention to these subjects before, to leave this room in a condition to decide upon the validity or the invalidity of the hypothesis of evolution; but I have desired to put before you the principles upon which all hypotheses respecting the history of Nature must be judged; and furthermore, to make apparent the nature of the evidence and the amount of cogency which is to be expected and may be obtained from it.

    Lectures and Essays

  • My purpose has been, not to enable those among you who have paid no attention to these subjects before, to leave this room in a condition to decide upon the validity or the invalidity of the hypothesis of evolution; but I have desired to put before you the principles upon which all hypotheses respecting the history of Nature must be judged; and furthermore, to make apparent the nature of the evidence and the amount of cogency which is to be expected and may be obtained from it.

    Lectures on Evolution

  • As it becomes increasingly clear that the outfit's core leadership in Pakistan are in decline, its position as a primary national security threat to the West now depends on the cogency of its regional franchises and allies.

    The Long Arms of al Qaeda

  • They affirm the cogency of the subject and know how things fit together.

    Jacob Neusner: The Costs of Jewish Studies Endowments

  • They affirm the cogency of the subject and know how things fit together.

    Jacob Neusner: The Costs of Jewish Studies Endowments

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