Dictionary

irrelevancy en · NOUN

Etymology

From ir- + relevancy or irrelevant + -cy.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) The quality of being irrelevant or inapplicable; lack of pertinence or connection.
2. (countable) A thing that is irrelevant—having no bearing on the subject of discussion.
   • To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there. 1895, Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences:
   • "You've been and taken my Japanese umbrella." "I won't have him making an exhibition of himself," said Cripps, ignoring the irrelevancy. 1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 102:

Forms

Antonyms

relevancy

Synonyms

irrelevance

Translations (5)

pl błahostka (a thing that is irrelevant) · de Belanglosigkeit (a thing that is irrelevant) · ga neamhábharthacht (the quality of being irrelevant or inapplicable) · pl błahość (the quality of being irrelevant or inapplicable) · pl nieistotność (the quality of being irrelevant or inapplicable)