Inconsistent

How to spell inconsistent

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce inconsistent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inconsistent mean?

1. adjectiveNot staying the same over time, or containing parts that contradict or fail to match each other.

Inconsistent in a sentence

• His attendance at the morning meetings has been inconsistent for months.

• The two reports gave inconsistent figures for last quarter's revenue.

Where does inconsistent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from the Latin negative prefix in-, meaning 'not', joined to the same root that gives us 'consistent'. The base comes from the Latin consistere, which literally meant 'to stand firm' or 'to stand together', formed from con- 'together' and sistere 'to stand or to cause to stand'. In its earliest English use during the 1600s, 'consistent' described things that held firmly together and agreed with one another, so 'inconsistent' naturally came to mean things that fail to agree, that contradict themselves, or that lack steadiness. The spelling trap lives in that buried -sist- root, which holds two unstressed vowels and a soft single 's', plus the doubled prefixes that make writers second-guess the letters around 'incon-'. The same sistere root still stands quietly inside relatives such as 'persist', 'resist', and 'assist', all of which share the idea of standing in some way.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• con- (together)
• sist (from sistere: to stand, to make stand)
• -ent (adjective suffix)