irrelevance

American  

[ih-rel-uh-vuhns] / ɪˈrɛl ə vəns /

noun

1. the quality or condition of being irrelevant.

2. an irrelevant thing, act, etc.

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Etymology

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

irrelevance

“The penalty for falling behind is, in theory, increasingly irrelevance and, eventually, bankruptcy.”

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 29, 2026

Many comments on the video mention the high volume and irrelevance of their ads on Pinterest.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

Another indicator of the document’s irrelevance is that it was issued by the Board of Peace, an organization that has no authority or power to do anything.

From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2026

Or they retreated, following Macdonald’s advice, into social irrelevance by adopting dead-end pseudo-philosophies like deconstructionism.

From Salon ● Apr. 19, 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