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

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