Inconsistency

How to spell inconsistency

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce inconsistency

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inconsistency mean?

1. nounA lack of steadiness, uniformity, or agreement between things that should match.

Inconsistency in a sentence

• The auditor flagged an inconsistency between the two financial reports.

• Customers complained about the inconsistency in product quality from batch to batch.

Where does inconsistency come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from a Latin foundation that English assembled over several layers. At its core is the verb sistere, meaning 'to stand' or 'to cause to stand still', a relative of stare, the ordinary Latin verb 'to stand'. Joined with the prefix con-, meaning 'together', it produced the idea of things standing together firmly or agreeing, which gave the adjective 'consistent'. The negative prefix in-, meaning 'not', reverses that sense, so 'inconsistent' describes things that do not hold together or agree. The noun ending -ency turns the quality into a state, and the whole word entered English in the 1600s as scientific and philosophical writing demanded precise terms for things that contradict themselves. The same sistere root surfaces in many relatives such as 'insist', 'persist', and 'resist', all of which carry the buried idea of standing.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• con- (together)
• sist (from sistere: to stand, to make stand)
• -ency (noun suffix denoting a state or quality)