absurdity
/æbˈsɝd.ɪ.ti/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.21 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The quality of being absurd or inconsistent with obvious truth, reason, or sound judgment.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "And it is a fact that in these two days the boy had almost talked over his mother, too; had parried all her objections one after another with that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity …"
- "The absurdity of the actual idea of an infinite number"
- "Neither [Jones][…] nor I (in 1966) could conceive of reducing our "science" to the ultimate absurdity of reading Finnish newspapers almost a century and a half old in order to establish "priority.""
- "There's credit too for highlighting the problems of Manchester's Castlefield Corridor, where he showed the absurdity of building Ordsall Chord to feed more trains into the congested corridor without upgrading the corridor itself."
Etymology
First attested around 1472. From Middle English absurdite, then from either Middle French absurdité, or from Late Latin absurditas (“dissonance, incongruity”), from Latin absurdus + -itas (“quality, state, degree”). Equivalent to absurd + -ity.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /æbˈsɝd.ɪ.ti/
- British English: /əbˈsɜːd.ɪ.ti/