aporia
/əˈpɔɹiə/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.75 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
3
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An expression of deliberation with oneself regarding uncertainty or doubt as to how to proceed.
noun
An apparently insoluble contradiction or tension, especially in a text's meaning; a logical impasse suggested by a text or speaker; a paradox.
Example Sentences
- "Aporia oft in doubt and fear will rest, And reason with itself what may be best."
- "Meanings are superposed in an aporia – not ‘either/or’, but ‘and/and’."
- "What they intend sickens and frightens them, and they can never speak of it directly. Instead, wrapped in whispers are ellipses, euphemisms, mumbled aporia followed by throat-clearing and a brisk change of subject."
- "But Green issues are already a contested zone, already a site where politicization is being fought for. In what follows, I want to stress two other aporias in capitalist realism, which are not yet politicized to anything like the same degree. The first is mental health."
- "EL James's multimillion selling series of novels ‘encodes the aporias of heterosexual relationships’, according to Professor Eva Illouz[.]"
- "Plato believed that the core impulse to philosophizing lies in aporia, the point at which, in struggling to understand a phenomenon or answer a question, we come up against a seemingly irresolvable contradiction."
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin aporia, from Ancient Greek ἀπορία (aporía), from ἄπορος (áporos, “impassable”), from ἀ- (a-, “a-”) + πόρος (póros, “passage”). By surface analysis, a- + pore + -ia.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /əˈpɔɹiə/
- British English: /əˈpɔːɹɪə/