coherence

UK/kəʊˈhɪəɹ.ən(t)s/US/koʊˈhɪɹ.ən(t)s/

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,010 of 15,258mostly written

Coherence is hanging together as a sensible whole. Lack coherence, narrative coherence, coherence of the argument.

It is about the connections rather than the parts — a text can be made of true sentences and still lack coherence, because nothing tells the reader how they relate. In physics, coherence is what makes a laser's light behave as one wave. Note cohere, from the Latin for sticking together.

Definitions of coherence

1nouncoherenceHanging together as a sensible whole.B2+
“Your essay has good ideas, but it lacks coherence because the paragraphs jump around.”

coherence is a hanging together.

Where it comes from

Latin cohaerentia comes from cohaerere, to stick together — co plus haerere, to cling. Adhere and hesitate come from the same clinging.

Latin
cohaerentia
Middle French
coherence
English, today
coherence

From Middle French coherence, from Latin cohaerentia. From Middle French coherence, from Latin cohaerentia. by surface analysis, cohere + -ence.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Logic & Argument

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coherence in the wild

Wave interference is strong when the paths taken by all of the interfering waves differ by less than the coherence length.
Coherence length
In quantum mechanics, there is a mathematically analogous concept of the quantum coherence length of a wave function.
Coherence length
In computer architecture, cache coherence is the uniformity of shared resource data that is stored in multiple local caches.
Cache coherence
A cache coherence protocol is used to maintain cache coherency.
Cache coherence
In physics, coherence expresses the potential for two waves to interfere.
Coherence (physics)

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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.

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