discordant
Meanings
- Not in accord or harmony; conflicting, incompatible.
- Of people: disagreeing with each other; dissenting, quarrelsome.
- Of sounds: harsh, jarring; specifically (music), of musical notes or tunes: not in harmony; dissonant, inharmonious.
- Of a rock formation or other land feature, or its alignment: cutting across or transverse to neighbouring features.
- Of a coastline: having bands of different types of rock running transversely to the coast, leading to the formation of alternating bays and headlands.
- Of two similar subjects, especially twins: differing in some characteristic.
- Ellipsis of serodiscordant (“of a couple: with one partner HIV positive and the other HIV negative”).
- Of figures, etc.: having opposite signs (for example, positive and negative).
- A thing which is not in accord or harmony with one or more other things.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Late Middle English discordaunt (“(adjective) not in accord or harmony; dissonant; (noun) element not in accord or harmony”), from Anglo-Norman descorda(u)nt, discorda(u)nt, Middle French descordant, discordant, and Old French descordant, discordant (“of people: quarrelsome; of things: in disagreement, at variance”) (modern French discordant), an adjective use of the present participle of descorder, discorder (“to fail to agree or harmonize, clash, disagree, discord”), from Latin discordāre, the present active infinitive of discordō (“to disagree, quarrel with”), from discors (“discordant, different, inharmonious”) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs). Discors is derived from dis- (“prefix meaning ‘apart, in two’”) + cor (“heart; (figurative) mind; soul”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱḗr (“heart”)). By surface analysis, discord (noun) + -ant (suffix forming adjectives from nouns with the sense ‘exhibiting [the condition or process described by the noun]’).