irrelevance
AmericanEtymology
Origin of irrelevance
1840–50; ir- 2 + relevance ( def. ); see relevant ( def. )
Explanation
Irrelevance represents what is NOT at all important to what’s going on right now. Anything that distracts you from this sentence is clearly an example of irrelevance. The Latin root word for irrelevance is relevare, which means “raising up.” The prefix ir- means “not,” therefore if a situation does not relate to or raise your interest, it’s irrelevant. In a courtroom, lawyers who lose sight of their case argue about irrelevances, and your sister speaks with irrelevance when she wakes you up to talk about rainbows. It’s always best to focus on important things, but irrelevance now and then won’t kill you.
Vocabulary lists containing irrelevance
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
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Grendel
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The Remains of the Day
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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.
Will Carl’s Jr. rebound to its former glory in its birthplace as a flagbearer for Californian burger culture or recede into irrelevance?
From Los Angeles Times • May 30, 2026
Or they retreated, following Macdonald’s advice, into social irrelevance by adopting dead-end pseudo-philosophies like deconstructionism.
From Salon • Apr. 19, 2026
"The alternative is really not purity, but irrelevance," he said.
From Barron's • Apr. 8, 2026
PayPal now has “institutional irrelevance among top merchants,” he wrote in a Tuesday blog post.
From MarketWatch • Feb. 4, 2026
In insisting these were the only tools required Galileo was dismissing Aristotelian logic as an irrelevance.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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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.