Irrelevant

How to spell irrelevant

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce irrelevant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does irrelevant mean?

1. adjectiveNot connected with or relevant to the matter under consideration.

Irrelevant in a sentence

• The judge ruled that the witness's opinion was irrelevant to the case.

• Most of the data in the report turned out to be irrelevant to the actual problem.

Where does irrelevant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is the negative of 'relevant', which traces back to the Latin verb relevare, meaning 'to raise up' or 'to lighten'. That verb was built from re- and levare, 'to lift', and the same lev root surfaces in everyday relatives such as 'elevate', 'lever', and even 'levity'. By the time the idea reached legal and logical English in the 1500s and 1600s, 'relevant' had come to mean something that 'bears upon' or 'lifts toward' the matter at hand, in other words something pertinent. The prefix here is the Latin negative in-, which assimilates to ir- before an r so that the sounds run together smoothly, and that assimilation is precisely why the word carries a doubled r that writers so often drop. So 'irrelevant' literally signals something that does not bear upon the question.

How the word is built

• ir- (not)
• re- (back/again)
• lev (from Latin levare: to raise, lighten)
• -ant (adjective suffix)