coherent

See also: cohérent

English

WOTD – 18 November 2012

Alternative forms

• cohærent (archaic)

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *ḱe?

Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm

Proto-Italic *kom

Proto-Italic *kom-

Latin con-

Latin haereō

Latin cohaereō

Latin cohaerēnsder.

Middle French coherentder.

English coherent

From Middle French coherent, from Latin cohaērēns, from co- + haereō. By surface analysis, cohere +‎ -ent.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kəʊˈhɪə.ɹənt/

  • Audio (Gloucestershire):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /koʊˈhɛɹ.ənt/, /koʊˈhiɹ.ənt/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /koːˈhɪɹ.ənt/
• (Australia) IPA^(key): /kəʉˈhɪə.ɹənt/

  • Audio (Queensland):

    (file)

• (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /kɐʉˈhiə.ɹənt/, /kɐʉˈhiːə.ɹənt/

Adjective

coherent (comparative more coherent, superlative most coherent)

2. Unified; sticking together; making up a whole.
   • 1997, Bernard J. Baars, “Psychology in a World of Sentient, Self-Knowing Beings: A Modest Utopian Fantasy”, in Robert L. Solso, editor, Mind and Brain Sciences in the 21st Century, MIT Press, published 1999, →ISBN, page 7:

     A sentence like this one cannot be understood unless somehow we can store the underlined words for several seconds, while we wait for the rest of the sentence to arrive, with the information needed to complete a coherent thought.

   • 2005, Tom Williamson, Sandlands: The Suffolk Coast and Heaths, Windgather, published 2005, →ISBN, page 15:

     Anglia, is part of a wider phenomenon of the seventh century - the development of recognisable, coherent kingdoms from the fragmented tribal society which emerged from the ruins of Roman Britain.

   • 2026 August 12, Jim Shelton, “A dying star offers a rare glimpse of how the universe recycles its raw materials”, in YaleNews‎^[1], archived from the original on 12 August 2026:

     They estimate that an individual fragment remains coherent for only about 10,000 years once it is exposed to the surrounding gas. After that, its material is largely shredded and mixed into interstellar space.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:coherent.
4. Orderly, logical and consistent.

   Antonym: disjointed

   • 1904 December, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Second Stain”, in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., published February 1905, →OCLC:

     At present she is unable to give any coherent account of the past, and the doctors hold out no hopes of the reestablishment of her reason.

   • 2007, Kenneth R. Hammond, Beyond Rationality: The Search for Wisdom in a Troubled Time, Oxford University Press, published 2007, →ISBN, page 108:

     Perhaps Khrushchev did have a coherent plan in mind at the time he placed the nuclear missiles in Cuba.

   • 2020 December 2, Christian Wolmar, “Wales offers us a glimpse of an integrated transport policy”, in Rail, page 56:

     The underlying problem with transport policy is that there no coherent strategy. Ministers have tended to encourage greater use of motor vehicles through both transport and (particularly) planning policies, while simultaneously warning of the terrible consequences of unfettered growth of road use.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:coherent.
5. Aesthetically ordered.
6. Having a natural or due agreement of parts; harmonious: a coherent design.
7. (physics) Of waves having the same direction, wavelength and phase, as light in a laser.
8. (botany) Attaching or pressing against an organ of the same nature.
9. (mathematics, sheaf theory, of a sheaf) Belonging to a specific class of sheaves having particularly manageable properties closely linked to the geometrical properties of the underlying space. See Coherent sheaf on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
10. (topology, of a topology $𝒯$ on a set $T$ with respect to a family $\{C_a\}$ of subsets of $T$) In a technical sense, determined by the (topology of) the subsets. Formally, Such that $𝒯$ is the finest topology on $T$ for which the inclusion maps ${\iota }_a:C_a\to T$ are continuous, where each $C_a$ is considered with its subspace topology.
11. (algebra, of a module) Finitely generated and such that all finitely generated submodules are finitely presented.
12. (algebra, of a ring) Such that every finitely generated (left) ideal is finitely presented.

Antonyms

• incoherent

Derived terms

• anticoherent
• autocoherent
• coherentism
• coherentist
• coherentization
• coherent light
• coherently
• decoherent
• discoherent
• noncoherent
• quasicoherent
• semicoherent
• supercoherent
• uncoherent
• unicoherent

Related terms

• adherent
• coherence
• cohere
• cohesive
• inherent

Translations

sticking together

• Bulgarian: свързан (bg) (svărzan), съгласуван (bg) (săglasuvan)
• Catalan: coherent (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 凝聚的 (níngjù de)

• Czech: soudržný (cs)
• Dutch: samenhangend (nl), coherent (nl)
• Finnish: koherentti (fi), yhtenäinen (fi)
• German: kohärent (de), zusammenhängend (de)
• Greek: συνεκτικός (el) (synektikós), συναφής (el) (synafís), συνδεδεμένος (el) (syndedeménos)
• Hebrew: עקבי m (ikví), עקיב m (akív), קוהרנטי (he) m (koherénti)
• Hungarian: koherens (hu), összefüggő (hu)
• Manx: co-haagh
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: koherent

  Nynorsk: koherent

• Portuguese: coerente (pt)
• Russian: свя́зный (ru) (svjáznyj)
• Spanish: coherente (es)
• Ukrainian: зв'я́зний (zvʺjáznyj)

orderly, logical and consistent

• Arabic: مُلْتَحِم (ar) (multaḥim), مُتَرَابِط (ar) (mutarābiṭ)
• Albanian: koherént (sq)
• Bulgarian: ясен (bg) (jasen), последователен (bg) (posledovatelen)
• Catalan: coherent (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 有條理的 / 有条理的 (yǒu tiáolǐ de), 連貫的 / 连贯的 (liánguàn de)

• Czech: souvislý (cs), ucelený (cs)
• Danish: sammenhængende
• Dutch: samenhangend (nl), coherent (nl)
• Esperanto: kohera
• Finnish: koherentti (fi), johdonmukainen (fi)
• French: cohérent (fr)
• Galician: coherente
• German: kohärent (de), schlüssig (de), widerspruchsfrei (de), folgerichtig (de)
• Greek: συνεκτικός (el) (synektikós)
• Hungarian: egységes (hu), koherens (hu)
• Italian: coerente (it)
• Latin: contextus
• Maltese: koerenti
• Manx: resoonagh, colhiantynagh
• Occitan: coerent (oc)
• Persian: منسجم (fa) (monsajem)
• Polish: koherentny (pl), spójny (pl)
• Portuguese: coerente (pt)
• Russian: свя́зный (ru) (svjáznyj), после́довательный (ru) (poslédovatelʹnyj)
• Scottish Gaelic: pongail
• Spanish: coherente (es)

aesthetically ordered

• Finnish: sopusointuinen (fi)
• German: stimmig
• Persian: مرتب (fa) (morattab)

of waves having the same direction, wavelength and phase

• Bulgarian: кохерентен (bg) (koherenten)
• Catalan: coherent (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 相干的 (xiānggān de)

• Czech: koherentní (cs)
• Esperanto: kohera
• Finnish: koherentti (fi), samanvaiheinen
• French: cohérent (fr)
• German: kohärent (de)
• Greek: σύμφωνος (el) (sýmfonos)
• Kazakh: когеренттi (kogerentti)
• Malay: koheren
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: koherent

  Nynorsk: koherent

• Polish: koherentny (pl)
• Portuguese: coerente (pt)
• Russian: когере́нтный (ru) (kogeréntnyj)
• Spanish: coherente (es)

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked

• Swedish: ^{(please verify)} sammanhängande (sv)

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin cohaerentem.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Barcelona):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ent

Adjective

coherent m or f (masculine and feminine plural coherents)

1. coherent

   Antonym: incoherent

Derived terms

• coherentment

Related terms

• coherència
• incoherent

Further reading

• “coherent”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “coherent”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2026
• “coherent” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• Alcover, Antoni Maria; Moll, Francesc de Borja (1963), “coherent”, in Diccionari català-valencià-balear (in Catalan)

Dutch

Etymology

From Latin cohaerēns, possibly via French cohérent.

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Adjective

coherent (comparative coherenter, superlative coherentst)

1. coherent

   Synonym: samenhangend

   Antonyms: incoherent, onsamenhangend

Declension

Declension of coherent
uninflected	coherent
inflected	coherente
comparative	coherenter
		positive	comparative	superlative
predicative/adverbial		coherent	coherenter	het coherentst het coherentste
indefinite	m./f. sing.	coherente	coherentere	coherentste
	n. sing.	coherent	coherenter	coherentste
	plural	coherente	coherentere	coherentste
definite		coherente	coherentere	coherentste
partitive		coherents	coherenters	—

Derived terms

• coherentie

Related terms

• cohesie
• incoherent

Latin

Verb

cohērent

1. third-person plural present active indicative of cohēreō

Romanian

Adjective

coherent m or n (feminine singular coherentă, masculine plural coherenți, feminine/neuter plural coherente)

1. alternative form of coerent

Declension

Declension of coherent

		singular			plural
		masculine	neuter	feminine	masculine	neuter	feminine
nominative- accusative	indefinite	coherent		coherentă	coherenți	coherente
	definite	coherentul		coherenta	coherenții	coherentele
genitive- dative	indefinite	coherent		coherente	coherenți	coherente
	definite	coherentului		coherentei	coherenților	coherentelor