irregularity Hear it!

Variant of irregular

irregular Definition

ir·regu·lar (i reg′yə lər)

adjective

  1. not conforming to established rule, method, usage, standard, etc.; out of the ordinary; anomalous
  2. not conforming to legal or moral requirements; lawless; disorderly
  3. not straight or even; not symmetrical; not uniform in shape, design, or proportion
  4. uneven in occurrence or succession; variable or erratic
  5. ☆ having minor flaws or imperfections: said of merchandise
  6. experiencing constipation
  7. Bot. not uniform in shape, size, etc. as the petals of a flower
  8. Gram. not inflected in the usual way “go” is an irregular verb
  9. Mil. not belonging to the regularly established army

Etymology: ME < OFr irregulier < ML irregularis: see in- & regular

noun

  1. a person or thing that is irregular
  2. a soldier who belongs to an irregular military force
  3. ☆ irregular merchandise

Related Forms:

irregularity Synonyms

irregularity

n.

  1. Unevenness

    roughness, bumpiness, jaggedness, stop, break, uncertainty, aberration, shift, change, twist, bump, hump, flaw, imperfection, dent, hole, variation, variability, spasm, deviation, inconsistency, distortion, asymmetry; see also roughness 1, variation 1, 2.

  2. Something that is irregular

    peculiarity, singularity, anomaly, abnormality, strangeness, uniqueness, exception, excess, unorthodoxy, malfunction, malformation, deviation, dispensation, allowance, exemption, privilege, nonconformity, unconformity, innovation, oddity, eccentricity, rarity, looseness, laxity; see also characteristic, quirk.

    Antonyms custom*, regularity*, rule. *

  3. A suspicious or illegal occurrence

    breach, infringement, violation; see crime 1, sin, violation 1.

irregularity Quotes

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know onlya few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, byany confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but reallyconcurring, laws, which Thoreau we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.

—Thoreau, Henry David

The natural world is full of irregularityand random alteration, but in the antiseptic, dust-free, shadowless, brightly lit, abstract realm of the mathematicians they like their cabbages spherical, please.

—Boyd,William Andrew Murray