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discordant

UK/dɪsˈkɔːdn̩t/US/dɪsˈkoɹdənt/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #11,820 of 15,258neutral

Discordant means clashing, and not in harmony. Notes that fight, or facts that will not sit together.

Music has the original sense, where discordant notes sound harsh against one another, and discord is the noun. The figurative use is about disagreement, so a discordant note in a report is a detail that does not fit the rest, and discordant voices in a group are the ones dissenting. Both senses share the sense of things failing to agree. Its opposite is harmonious, and concord is the formal noun for agreement.

Definitions of discordant

  1. 1adjectivediscordantClashing and not in harmony.C1

    “There was one discordant voice at the meeting.”

Where it comes from

Discord is hearts apart. Latin discors joins dis, apart, to cor, a heart, so discordant things have their hearts pulling in different directions. The sound came afterwards.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *dwóh₁

  2. Proto-Indo-European

    *ḱḗr — heart

  3. Latin

    discordāre

  4. Old French

    descordant

  5. Middle French

    descordant

  6. Anglo-Norman

    descordant

  7. Middle English

    discordaunt — (adjective) not in accord or harmony; dissonant; (noun) element not in accord or harmony

  8. English, today

    discordant

Built from

  • discordant · Old French — of people: quarrelsome; of things: in disagreement, at variance
  • discorder · Old French — to fail to agree or harmonize, clash, disagree, discord
  • discordō · Latin — to disagree, quarrel with
  • discors · Latin — discordant, different, inharmonious

From Late Middle English discordaunt (“(adjective) not in accord or harmony; dissonant; (noun) element not in accord or harmony”), from Anglo-Norman descordant, discordant, Middle French descordant, discordant, and Old French descordant, discordant (“of people: quarrelsome; of things: in disagreement, at variance”) (modern French discordant), an use of the of descorder, discorder (“to fail to agree or harmonize, clash, disagree, discord”), from Latin discordāre, the of discordō (“to disagree, quarrel with”), from discors (“discordant, different, inharmonious”) + -ō. Discors is derived from dis- (“meaning ‘apart, in two’”) + cor (“heart; (figurative) mind; soul”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ḱḗr (“heart”)). by surface analysis, discord + -ant.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

discordant in the wild

  • A discordant coastline occurs where bands of different rock types run perpendicular to the coast.

    Discordant coastline

  • Part of the Dorset coastline running north from the Portland limestone of Durlston Head is a clear example of a discordant coastline.

    Discordant coastline

  • In contrast, a dike is a discordant intrusive sheet, which does cut across older rocks.

    Sill (geology)

  • The album was broadly welcomed by critics, though they felt that many of the more serious settings were too modern and discordant for Tolkien's more traditional words.

    At Dawn in Rivendell

  • A stock has a discordant relationship with the rocks that it intrudes.

    Stock (geology)

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

the discors family

discorddiscordant

discordant — used about once every 10,786 pages · #11,820 · point at the bar for the others