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Definition of "incongruity" []

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

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "incongruity" in a sentence
  • "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.'"
  • "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"
  • "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!’"