Definition of "incoherence"

(uncountable) The quality of being incoherent.

1. The quality of not making logical sense or of not being logically connected.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • HE DESCENDED, signifieth a voluntarie motion, where as the bodie dead hath neither WILL nor MOTION. […] Though therefore this exposition cannot be charged with falsitie, for Christ was trulie buried; yet may it not bee endured by reason of […] the improprietie and incoherence of the worde, that a deade corps should descend […]

     1599, Thomas Bilson, The Effect of Certaine Sermons Touching the Full Redemption of Mankind by the Death and Bloud of Christ Jesus‎, London: Walter Burre, page 145

   • […] the said Lane is prevailed with […] to prefer an Indictment against Dr. Oates, for attempting to commit upon him the horrid and detestable sin of Sodomy; but the Grand Jury, by reason of the incoherence and slightness of his Evidence, did not think fit to finde it, but returned an Ignoramus.

     1680, Henry Care, The History of the Damnable Popish Plot, London: B.R. et al., Chapter 23, Section 2, p. 327

   • Bulstrode went away now without anxiety as to what Raffles might say in his raving, which had taken on a muttering incoherence not likely to create any dangerous belief.

     1872, George Eliot, chapter 70, in Middlemarch‎

   • Lily’s head was so heavy with the weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of a dream.

     1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth‎, Book 2, Chapter 10

   • My grandfather, accustomed to the multifarious conjugations of ancient Greek verbs, had found English, for all its incoherence, a relatively simple tongue to master.

     2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex‎, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Book 2, p. 99

2. (obsolete) The quality of not holding together physically.  quotations

   Quotations

   • […] if it [Salt-Petre] be beaten into an impalpable powder, this powder, when it is pour’d out, will emulate a Liquor, by reason that the smallness and incoherence of the parts do both make them easie to be put into motion […]

     1669, Robert Boyle, “The History of Fluidity and Firmness,” Section 16, in Certain Physiological Essays and Other Tracts, London: Henry Herringman, p. 182

(countable) Something incoherent; something that does not make logical sense or is not logically connected.  quotations  examples

(psychiatry) Thinking or speech that is so disorganized that it is essentially inapprehensible to others.  examples