| 释义 |
incoherent, a. (n.)|ɪnkəʊˈhɪərənt|
Also 7 -hærent.
[f. in-3 + coherent: cf. F. incohérent (18th c. in Hatz.-Darm.).]
A. adj. Not coherent.
1. a. Without physical coherence or cohesion; consisting of parts which do not stick or cling together; unconnected, disjoined, loose.
1695Woodward Nat. Hist. Earth ii. (1723) 123 Matter which was..lax, incoherent, and in Form of Earth, or of Sand. 1756C. Lucas Ess. Waters I. 40 Various earths..void of humidity are but loose, light, and incoherent dust. 1811Pinkerton Petral. I. 340 Entire mountains of serpentine and ollite, which were only heaps of incoherent blocks. 1849Murchison Siluria iv. 72 A mass of..incoherent slaty schists.
b. transf. and fig.
1768Burke Corr. (1844) I. 161 He spoke of the ministry as a strange incoherent composition, that certainly would not stand. 1849Grote Greece ii. lvii. (1862) V. 105 The incoherent mixture of races. 1884H. Spencer in Pop. Sc. Monthly XXIV. 730 A comparatively small body of officials, coherent,..and acting under central authority, has an immense advantage over an incoherent public which has no settled policy.
2. Of abstract things (as schemes, actions, etc.): Consisting of or forming a group or series of incongruous parts; not connected or unified by any general principle or characteristic; inconsistent, uncoordinated.
1626Donne Serm. xxi. 211 But hath lost his Soule so long agoe in rusty and incoherent Sins, (not sins that produced one another as in Davids case). 1732Berkeley Alciphr. iii. §11 An incoherent fortuitous system, governed by chance. 1871Tylor Prim. Cult. I. 2 They affirm, with Aristotle, that nature is not full of incoherent episodes, like a bad tragedy.
3. a. Of thought and mental phenomena, language, literary compositions, etc.: Without logical connexion or natural sequence of ideas; inconsistent, rambling, disjointed.
1632Sanderson Twelve Serm. 467 Whose discourse should be incohærent and vnjoynted. 1709Steele Tatler No. 60 ⁋7 This incoherent Stuff was answer'd by a tender Sigh. 1791Mrs. Radcliffe Rom. Forest i, Sometimes she muttered an incoherent sentence. 1839Keightley Hist. Eng. II. 25 She used to utter much incoherent rhapsody.
b. Characterized or marked by incoherency of thought or expression.
1803J. Porter Thaddeus i. (1831) 5 His voice was hurried and incoherent. 1845T. Archer Mem. & Disc. 287 Listen to that preacher, unrhetorical, incoherent, ungrammatical. 1874H. Maudsley Respons. in Ment. Dis. vii. 245 Sometimes..there was an attack of incoherent and furious mania.
4. Incapable of cohering or coalescing; naturally different; incompatible, incongruous.
1643Milton Divorce i. x, To force a mixture of minds that cannot unite, and to sowe the furrow of mans nativity with seed of two incoherent and uncombining dispositions. 1704Swift Batt. Bks. Wks. 1778 I. 425 His armour was patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces. 1708W. King Cookery (1807) 71 Hence mack'rel seem delightful to the eyes, Though dress'd with incoherent gooseberries.
5. Physics. Producing, involving, or consisting of waves that have no definite or stable phase relationship with one another.
1929A. Sommerfeld Lect. Wave Mech. vi. 91 In addition to secondary radiations of the same frequency as the incident light, we have also radiations of altered frequency... These modified radiations bear obviously no phase relationship with the exciting radiation, and might therefore be described as ‘incoherent radiations’. 1953C. E. Hall Introd. Electron Microsc. vii. 155 If two incoherent sources are observed with a microscope, the intensity at the image plane is the sum of the intensities from each one taken separately. 1959Born & Wolf Princ. Optics vii. 255 In beams from different sources, the fluctuations are completely uncorrelated, and the beams are said to be mutually incoherent. Ibid. x. 506 The light vibrations arising from different elements of the source may be assumed to be statistically independent (mutually incoherent), and of zero mean value. 1966McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. XII. 57/2 It is also useful to distinguish between coherent and incoherent scattering; the distinction is made on the basis of the ability of the scattered wave to interfere with the incident one. Inelastic scattering is always incoherent.
B. n. That which is incoherent. rare.
1823T. G. Wainewright Ess. & Crit. (1880) 319 Perceptions..of coherents in incoherents. |