Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Lack of congruence.
  • noun The state or quality of being incongruous.
  • noun Something incongruous.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being incongruous; want of congruity or mutual fitness; unsuitableness of one thing to another; lack of adaptation.
  • noun That which is incongruous; something not suitably conjoined, related, or adapted: as, this episode is an incongruity.

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

  • noun The quality or state of being incongruous; lack of congruity; unsuitableness; inconsistency; impropriety.
  • noun obsolete Disagreement of parts; lack of symmetry or of harmony.
  • noun That which is incongruous; lack of congruity.

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

  • noun The state of being incongruous, or lacking congruence.
  • noun An instance or point of disagreement; a dissimilarity; a discrepancy; an inconsistency.
  • noun A thing that is incongruous.

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

  • noun the quality of disagreeing; being unsuitable and inappropriate

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Certainly it was an exercise in incongruity to compare these quiet, rather depressed looking people with the vision conjured up by Lord John's 'raving lunatics,' 'worthy of the straight jacket,' or Paul Filey's 'sexless monstrosities.'

    The Convert 1907

  • And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now -- "Let it pass for the present"; that is, "Thou recoilest, and no wonder, for the seeming incongruity is startling; but in the present case do as thou art bidden." for thus it becometh us -- "us," not in the sense of "me and thee," or

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 1871

  • More modern theories have rooted humour in incongruity, the juxtaposition of things that don’t belong together (Morreall), or in cognitive shifts of problem resolution (Latta) or from seriousness to play (Boyd).

    Notes Toward a Theory of Narrative Modality Hal Duncan 2009

  • Canucks in the NFL doesn’t work so well as an analogy to Real Salt Lake, because the incongruity is too obvious to be seen as a mistake.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Play Soccer Like It’s 1799 2010

  • More modern theories have rooted humour in incongruity, the juxtaposition of things that don’t belong together (Morreall), or in cognitive shifts of problem resolution (Latta) or from seriousness to play (Boyd).

    Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • Such striking incongruity is especially appropriate to poetry, such as in Dylan Thomas’s ‘Once below a time’, E.E. Cummings’s ‘the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses’, and John Milton’s ‘Blind mouths!’

    Catachresis and the amusing, awful and artificial cathedral 2009

  • This stadium plan is the most unsustainable action the City has contemplated in a long time - the incongruity is absurd.

    New smoke and mirrors on Paulson stadiums deal (Jack Bog's Blog) 2009

  • Another incongruity was the collection of curios and bric-a-brac garnered on their travels.

    Ultima Thule 2003

  • She was liable to walk into the net at the last minute, and another incongruity was the last thing we needed.

    To Say Nothing of the Dog Willis, Connie 1997

  • In order to show the “stupidity of the concepts and words” which emerged from this document, that is, their incongruity and inexactitude, he made use of the lack of reliable testimony or other historical sources which would have validated it and of its contrast with Roman, Hebrew, and Christian law.

    RENAISSANCE HUMANISM NICOLA ABBAGNANO 1968

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