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absurdity

UK/əbˈsɜːd.ɪ.ti/US/æbˈsɝd.ɪ.ti/
nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,817 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: absurdities

Absurdity is the quality of being ridiculous. The absurdity of it, sheer absurdity, reduced to absurdity.

Reductio ad absurdum is the argument that shows a premise false by following it to a ridiculous conclusion, and it is one of the oldest tools in logic. In philosophy, the absurd is Camus's term for the gap between our search for meaning and a universe that offers none. Note absurd; and that the Latin means out of tune, from surdus, deaf.

Definitions of absurdity

  1. 1nounabsurdityThe quality of being ridiculous.C1

    “Everyone laughed at the absurdity of the rule, which banned umbrellas on rainy days.”

absurdity is a quality of ridiculousness.

Where it comes from

Latin absurditas comes from absurdus, out of tune or senseless, from ab plus surdus, deaf or muffled. Surd in mathematics comes from the same deafness.

  1. Latin

    absurditas — dissonance, incongruity

  2. Middle French

    absurdité

  3. Middle English

    absurdite

  4. English, today

    absurdity

First attested around 1472. From Middle English absurdite, then from either Middle French absurdité, or from Latin absurditas (“dissonance, incongruity”), from Latin absurdus itas. Equivalent to absurd + ity.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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absurdity in the wild

  • "Absurd" is the adjective used to describe absurdity, e.g., "David and the boys laughed at the absurd situation." It derives from the Latin absurdum meaning "out of tune".

    Absurdity

  • Absurdism is a concept in philosophy related to the notion of absurdity.

    Absurdity

  • Much of his work focuses on war and its absurdity.

    Veijo Meri

  • Quixotism is usually related to "over-idealism", meaning an idealism that does not take consequence or absurdity into account.

    Quixotism

  • "Up tack" is the Unicode name for a symbol that is also called "bottom", "falsum", "absurdum", or "absurdity", depending on context.

    Up tack

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • absurd