Definitions

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

  • noun The quality or state of being incontinent.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being incontinent; want of continence or holding in; unrestrained movement or flow; superabundant outpour.
  • noun Specifically
  • noun Lack of due restraint of the appetites or passions; intemperance in sexual intercourse; unchasteness; licentiousness.
  • noun In medicine, the inability of any of the physical organs to restrain discharges of their contents; involuntary discharge or evacuation: as, incontinence of urine.

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

  • noun Incapacity to hold; hence, incapacity to hold back or restrain; the quality or state of being incontinent; lack of continence; failure to restrain the passions or appetites; indulgence of lust; lewdness.
  • noun (Med.) The inability of any of the animal organs to restrain the natural evacuations, especially urination, or defecation, so that the discharges are involuntary.

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

  • noun dated Lack of self-restraint, an inability to control oneself; unchastity.
  • noun medicine The inability of any of the physical organs to restrain discharges of their contents; involuntary discharge or evacuation (of urine or feces).

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

  • noun involuntary urination or defecation
  • noun indiscipline with regard to sensuous pleasures

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French incontinence, or Latin incontinentia.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for men's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways.

    Joyce, Ulysses, 10

    January 7, 2007