Incongruous

WORD OF THE DAY

incongruous / adjective / in-KAHN-gruh-

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Definition
1: lacking congruity
1a: not harmonious
1b: incompatible
1c: not conforming
1d: disagreeing
1c: inconsistent within itself
1d: lacking propriety
1e: unsuitable

Examples
The sight of a horse and carriage amongst the cars on the road was a bit incongruous.

"The gunplay scene was so incongruous with the rest of the film that one wonders if [director Michael] Engler added the assassination storyline to simply beef up the movie's runtime."
— John Vaaler, The Middlebury (Vermont) Campus, 3 Oct. 2019


Did You Know?
Incongruous is a spin-off of its antonym, congruous, which means "in agreement, harmony, or correspondence."
Etymologists are in agreement about the origin of both words: they trace to the Latin congruus, from the verb congruere, which means "to come together" or "to agree."
The dates of these words' first uses in English match up pretty well, too. Both words are first known to have appeared in English in the early 1580s.