absurdity

First attested around 1472. From Middle English absurdite,^[1] then from either Middle French absurdité, or from Late Latin absurditas (“dissonance, incongruity”), from Latin absurdus +‎ -itas (“quality, state, degree”).^[2][3] Equivalent to absurd +‎ -ity.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əbˈsɜːd.ɪ.ti/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• (US) IPA^(key): /æbˈsɝd.ɪ.ti/, /æbˈzɝd.ɪ.ti/, /əbˈsɝd.ɪ.ti/, /əbˈzɝd.ɪ.ti/

absurdity (countable and uncountable, plural absurdities)

1. (countable) That which is absurd; an absurd action; a logical contradiction. [First attested in the late 15^th century.]^[3]
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 7, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     And it is a fact that in these two days the boy had almost talked over his mother, too; had parried all her objections one after another with that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity …

2. (uncountable) The quality of being absurd or inconsistent with obvious truth, reason, or sound judgment. [First attested in the early 16^th century.]^[3]
   • 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC:

     The absurdity of the actual idea of an infinite number

   • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page viii:

     Neither [Jones] […] nor I (in 1966) could conceive of reducing our "science" to the ultimate absurdity of reading Finnish newspapers almost a century and a half old in order to establish "priority."

   • 2023 July 12, Philip Haigh, “Narrow narrative overlooks past and present achievements”, in RAIL, number 987, page 50:

     There's credit too for highlighting the problems of Manchester's Castlefield Corridor, where he showed the absurdity of building Ordsall Chord to feed more trains into the congested corridor without upgrading the corridor itself.

3. (obsolete, rare) Dissonance. [Attested from around 1350 to 1470 until the late 17^th century.]^[3]

• “absurdity”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “absurdity”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “absurdity”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
• “absurdity”, in Collins English Dictionary.