coherence
Americannoun
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logical interconnection; overall sense or understandability.
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congruity; consistency.
- Synonyms:
- rationality, agreement, harmony, correspondence
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Physics, Optics. (of waves) the state of being coherent.
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Linguistics. the property of unity in a written text or a segment of spoken discourse that stems from the links among its underlying ideas and from the logical organization and development of its thematic content.
noun
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logical or natural connection or consistency
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another word for cohesion
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A property holding for two or more waves or fields when each individual wave or field is in phase with every other one. Lasers, for example, emit almost perfectly coherent light; all the photons emitted by a laser have the same frequency and are in phase. Since quantum states can be described by a wave equation, coherence can hold for quantum states in general, though only among bosons. Coherence is generally possible in physical systems that may undergo superposition. Maintaining coherence of light is important in fiber optic communications.
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See also Bose-Einstein condensate
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of coherence
First recorded in 1570–80; coher(ent) + -ence
Explanation
When something has coherence, all of its parts fit together well. An argument with coherence is logical and complete — with plenty of supporting facts. Coherence comes from a Latin word meaning “to stick together." When you say policies, arguments and strategies are coherent, you’re praising them for making sense. Scientists are always looking for coherence in data to support their hypotheses. And coaches are always looking for coherence in their teams, so they don't fall apart.
Vocabulary lists containing coherence
Argumentative Writing, List 2
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Expository Writing, List 1
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The Things They Carried
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Whether that’s likely to lead to greater or less political coherence and national conflict is impossible to say, but both systems will face severe stress tests in the years ahead.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026
"It'll improve policy coherence so no policy unintentionally pulls against attempts to help more young people into work," she said.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026
Among the most important concepts in quantum mechanics is quantum coherence.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 5, 2026
Supporters hail the move as bringing accountability and coherence — through the governor — to all the departments and agenices involved in education.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026
We have a second arc of coherence spanning the text, which links all the manifestations of cold weather.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
It was during spin echo tests -- a well-established technique to measure coherence times -- that the team noticed funny peaks, corresponding to much longer coherences than those on the single ions.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 15, 2024
They showed that within a crystal jam-packed with rare-earth ions were qubit gems with much longer coherences than would typically be expected in such a dense system.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 15, 2024
One of the most striking demonstrations of these physics has been in unconventional superconductors, where signatures of enhanced electronic coherences and super-transport have been documented in the resulting non-equilibrium states.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2023
Knowledge lags in profound, accurate, honest, subtle and direct language spoken or written which always seems to contradict easy coherences of group whether polite table talk or political party or nation.
From New York Times ● May 21, 2016
Having thus settled the coherences, we move on with the narrative.
From The Prince of India — Volume 02 by Wallace, Lewis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
