Inconsistencies

How to spell inconsistencies

15 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce inconsistencies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inconsistencies mean?

1. nounInstances where parts of something fail to agree or match, revealing internal contradiction.

Inconsistencies in a sentence

• The auditor flagged several inconsistencies between the invoices and the bank statements.

• The editor noticed inconsistencies in how the character's name was spelled across the chapters.

Where does inconsistencies come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word reaches back to the Latin verb sistere, meaning 'to make stand' or 'to set in place', which was itself a form of stare, 'to stand'. Adding the prefix con-, meaning 'together', produced consistere, literally 'to stand firm together' or 'to hold together'; from this came the idea of things being in agreement or fitting together. English took 'consistent' through French and Latin in the early 1600s, and the negative form 'inconsistent' followed, using the Latin in- meaning 'not'. The noun 'inconsistency', for a lack of agreement or a clash between statements, was built on it, and the plural 'inconsistencies' simply marks several such clashes. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle, where the schwa hides whether the ending is -ency or -ancy, and the final shift from -y to -ies catches writers who forget the rule.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• con- (together)
• sist (from sistere: to stand)
• -ency (state)
• -ies (plural)