concordance

American  

[kon-kawr-dns, kuhn-] / kɒnˈkɔr dns, kən- /

noun

concordances plural

1. agreement; concord; harmony.

   the concordance of the membership.

2. an alphabetical index of the principal words of a book, as of the Bible, with a reference to the passage in which each occurs.

3. an alphabetical index of subjects or topics.

4. (in genetic studies) the degree of similarity in a pair of twins with respect to the presence or absence of a particular disease or trait.

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concordance British  

/ kənˈkɔːdəns /

noun

1. a state or condition of agreement or harmony

2. a book that indexes the principal words in a literary work, often with the immediate context and an account of the meaning

3. an index produced by computer or machine, alphabetically listing every word in a text

4. an alphabetical list of subjects or topics

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• concordances
  plural

Etymology

Origin of concordance

1350–1400; Middle English concordaunce < Anglo-French, equivalent to Middle French concordance < Medieval Latin concordantia. See concord, -ance

Explanation

Concordance happens when everything agrees. It can refer to an agreement of opinions, or it can describe things that are in harmony. Your words may be in concordance with your actions — that means they're expressing the same thing. Concordance traces back to the Latin word concordans, meaning "being of one mind." When things are in concordance, it's as if they're of one mind: they agree or are in harmony. A talented home designer will remodel an interior so there's concordance from room to room. If you're a scholarly type, you might already know concordance can also be a list of the main words in a book, usually linked to the passages where they occur.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

concordance concordances

The C-index, or concordance index, measures how well a model can rank people by risk.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 9, 2026

This is a story about conflict, internal and external, but it also allows, in songs such as “Great Expectations” and “Stay Gold,” for luxuriant and surprising concordance.

From New York Times ● Mar. 6, 2023

“Additionally, ChatGPT demonstrated a high level of concordance and insight in its explanations. These results suggest that large language models may have the potential to assist with medical education, and potentially, clinical decision-making.”

From Washington Times ● Jan. 29, 2023

“A substantial literature on couple concordance exists for health behaviors such as alcohol intake, sleep duration and physical activity,” the study states.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 19, 2022

If identical twins possess a strong concordance for schizophrenia, say, while fraternal twins—born and bred in an identical environment—show little concordance, then the roots of that illness can be firmly attributed to genetics.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

They clutched biblical concordances, Hebrew lexicons, Gospel commentaries.

From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2012

Each chapter holds up its title phrase or word for close inspection in the light of etymologies, concordances, psychoanalytic theories and literary texts.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 13, 2012

The scholars work on this in a small inner room, equipped with concordances, dictionaries, and all the relevant texts.

From The New Yorker ● May 6, 1955

There are plenty of parallels, if not exact concordances, between the infinite longings expressed in German romantic art and the sense of pantheistic immanence, God-over-the-Hudson, that ran through American nature painting in the mid-19th century.

From Time Magazine Archive

Baen readers use the electronic editions of their favorite series to build concordances of characters, places and events.

From Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books by Doctorow, Cory