noun
definition
That which is absurd; an absurd action; a logical contradiction.
definition
The quality of being absurd or inconsistent with obvious truth, reason, or sound judgment.
definition
Dissonance.
Examples of absurdity in a Sentence
She pulled back and shook her head at the absurdity of his entrance.
One capital argument of the Christians was the absurdity of a man making an idol and then being afraid of or adoring the work of his own hands.
He used absurdity to expose absurdity in the world.
But there is an inherent absurdity when you try to take a compliant approach.
The final scene in the BBC production should illustrate the absurdity of the charge.
His Vindication is meant to be a reduction to an absurdity.
But while Mr Blair has spoken of its ' manifest absurdity ' (The Hague, January 1998 ).
Thus, once again we encounter the sheer absurdity and nonsense advanced by pro-vivisectionists.
In general, there is no good reason for thinking that reports of mystical experience must imply logical absurdity.
Here, the violence, tho undoubtedly extreme, is somewhat defused by the delirious absurdity of the staging.
The best critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too obviously artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity.
He spoke of imperial federation as a "dream and an absurdity."
Plutarch remarked the fact that the Greek myths of Cronus, of Dionysus, of Apollo and the Python, and of Demeter, " all the things that are shrouded in mystic ceremonies and are presented in rites," " do not fall short in absurdity of the legends about Osiris and Typhon."
I'd like to claim I realized the absurdity of this myself.
Then I scratched a bit deeper to reveal the absurdity of the 9/11 commission, they really expect us to believe that stuff?
Any attempt to imagine them will lead to apparent absurdity.
It is a patent absurdity that our politics are based on the assumption that all Catholics want a united Ireland.
And even apparently apolitical absurdity is on some level an appropriate response to mass panic.
In effect molecule to man evolution is a belief in the logical absurdity of undirected progress.
The limitation scheme he opposed, on the ground that monarchy under the conditions expressed in it would be an absurdity.
Bernadotte communicated Morner's offer to Napoleon, who treated the whole affair as an absurdity.
This assertion is never directly stated because that would reveal the absurdity of the equation.
These charges, of which the absurdity was soon shown by cross-examination, nevertheless placed the queen for some time in great danger.
Together, then, with the necessary multiplication of specialism, one of the chief lessons of the latter moiety of the 19th century was the unity of medicine in all its branches - a unity strengthened rather than weakened by special researches, such as those into "medical" and "surgical" pathology, which are daily making more manifest the absurdity of the distinction.
Johan Nordahl Brun (1745-1816), a young writer who did better things later on, gave the finishing touch to the exotic absurdity by bringing out a wretched piece called Zarina, which was hailed by the press as the first original Danish tragedy, although Ewald's exquisite Rolf Krage, which truly merited that title, had appeared two years before.
He possessed some oratorical ability and adopted a very theatrical style of elocution, "tuning his voice and balancing his hands"; and his addresses were a strange medley of solemnity and buffoonery, of clever wit and the wildest absurdity, of able and original disquisition and the worst artifices of the oratorical charlatan.
Without considering the impossibility of restoring the majesty of ancient Rome, or the absurdity of dignifying the medieval Roman rabble by the name of Populus Romanus, he threw himself with passion into the republican movement, and sacrificed his old friends of the Colonna family to what he judged a patriotic duty.
In his kindred productions he relies mainly upon a single element of the humorous - logical sequence and unruffled gravity bridling in an otherwise frantic absurdity, and investing it with an air of sense.
To see the absurdity of the second paradox of relativity is easier than to refute it.
Fechner was saved from this absurdity, but only to fall into the greater absurdity of his own panpsychism.
The absurdity of excluding the plebeians from all but a merely theoretical citizenship, based on the negative fact of freedom, seems to have become apparent before the close of the monarchical period.
Bradshaw exposed the absurdity of these claims in a letter to the Guardian (January 26, 1863).
Richard Head in his Life and Death of Mother Shipton (1684) says, "the body was of indifferent height, her head was long, with sharp fiery eyes, her nose of an incredible and unproportionate length, having many crooks and turnings, adorned with many strange pimples of divers colours, as red, blue and dirt, which like vapours of brimstone gave such a lustre to her affrighted spectators in the dead time of the night, that one of them confessed several times in my hearing that her nurse needed no other light to assist her in her duties" Allowing for the absurdity of this account, it certainly seems (if any reliance is to be placed on the so-called authorities) that the child was phenomenally plain and deformed.
Above all, the sacred book of laws, the Vendidad, breathes throughout the spirit of the Sassanian period, in its intolerance, its casuistry degenerating into absurdity, and its soulless monotony.
The absurdity of this is obvious, for Abdarrahman died in the year 666.1 Others say 2 that Moawiya was afraid lest Abdarrahman should become too popular.
But the crowning absurdity is that, if all universals were hypothetical, Barbara in the first figure would become a purely hypothetical syllogism - a consequence which seems innocent enough until we remember that all universal affirmative conclusions in all sciences would with their premises dissolve into mere hypothesis.
The gathered illhumour of many years, aggravated by the confident assurance of the Hegelians, found vent at length in the introduction to his next book, where Hegel's works are described as three-quarters utter absurdity and one-quarter mere paradox - a specimen of the language in which during his subsequent career he used to advert to his three predecessors Fichte, Schelling, but above all Hegel.
Here it need only be said that Hall himself soon became aware of the impossibility of the "Helstat," and his whole policy aimed at making its absurdity patent to Europe, and substituting for it a constitutional Denmark to the Eider which would be in a position to come to terms with an independent Holstein.
Let us grant that there is as much intellectual absurdity in acting unjustly as in denying that two and two make four; still, if a man has to choose between absurdity and unhappiness, he will naturally prefer the former; and Clarke, as we have already seen, is not really prepared to maintain that such preference is irrational.'
Kant has pointedly declared that it would be a gross absurdity to suppose that in his view separate, distinct things-in-themselves existed corresponding to the several objects of perception.
The system of setting nations by the ears with the view of settling the quarrels of a few reigning houses was reduced to absurdity when the people, as in these cases, came to be partitioned and exchanged without the assertion or negation of a single principle affecting their interests or rousing their emotions.
He gave amusing illustrations of the absurdity and poverty of the current pulpit oratory of his day, some of them being taken from the sermons of his own father.
It is not worth while to refer to all the wild guesses that were made by various writers, but Dr Creighton shows the absurdity of one of these calculations made in 1554 by Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador for the information of the doge and senators of Venice.
Concordia discors pointed out the absurdity of the constant tendency to multiply oaths, while "remonstrances," "narratives," "queries," "prescriptions," "vindications," "declarations" and "statements" were scattered broadcast.
Income tax, for instance, is calculated on income, and is in the nature of a deduction from the income; but local rates are calculated in proportion to certain other payments, actual or potential, and could without absurdity exceed 20s.
Green in the first chapter of his Prolegomena to Ethics, involves the absurdity that our whole experience is a tissue of relations with no points of attachment on which the relations depend.
He chooses this order so as to work up to a climax of error and absurdity in heathen worship. The direct natureworship of the Chaldeans is shown to be false because its objects are works of the Creator, fashioned for the use of men.
The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.
He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works of Aeschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles.
Clement exhibits the absurdity and immorality of the stories told with regard to the pagan deities, the cruelties perpetrated in their worship, and the utter uselessness of bowing down before images made by hands.