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coherent

/koʊˈhɪrənt//kəʊˈhɪərənt/·adjective
logical and well organized; holding together as a clear whole
Fig. 1 — A handful of broken marks drift apart, none of them touching, adding up to nothing anyone could read.
01Definition

Something coherent hangs together: its parts connect logically and form a clear, unified whole. A coherent essay moves from point to point without contradiction; a coherent policy has all its pieces pulling in the same direction. Applied to a person, it means able to speak clearly and rationally — someone in shock may be 'too dazed to be coherent'. The root is the Latin cohaerere, 'to stick together', the same root as 'cohesion'.

02In use
  • iHer review reads as a coherent synthesis of the sources rather than a list of summaries.
  • iiAfter the accident he was too shaken to give a coherent account of what happened.
  • iiiCritics say the government has failed to offer a coherent energy policy.
03Collocations
  • a coherent argument
  • a coherent strategy
  • a coherent account
  • logically coherent

Family coherence (noun) · coherently (adverb) · cohere (verb) · incoherent (adjective)

04Relations

=logical, consistent, lucid, rational, structured

≠incoherent, disjointed, ambiguous

05Compared
PairThe difference
coherent vs inherenthangs together logically, clear and connected → coherent; built into a thing's nature, inseparable from it → inherent.
06TOEFL & IELTS

This word is part of the exam itself: IELTS Writing is scored partly on 'Coherence and Cohesion' (Speaking on 'Fluency and Coherence'), and TOEFL rubrics reward 'coherent, well-organized' responses. Knowing what examiners mean by coherence — clear progression, linked ideas, no contradictions — is as valuable as knowing the word. It also appears in reading passages about theories and arguments.

07Asked
What is the difference between coherent and cohesive?
Cohesion is the visible glue — linking words, pronouns, repeated terms; coherence is whether the ideas actually follow from one another. The trap is that they come apart: a paragraph can be stuffed with 'therefore' and 'moreover' and still make no sense — cohesive but incoherent. Glue on nonsense is still nonsense; examiners read past the connectors to the logic.
What does it mean when a person is coherent?
Able to speak clearly and logically — and the word has a clinical edge: emergency reports often describe accident victims as 'conscious and coherent', meaning able to give a connected account. The negative describes what shock, rage, or fever does to speech: 'too upset to be coherent' means the sentences no longer hold together, not that the person is unintelligent.
What is 'coherence and cohesion' in IELTS?
One of the four Writing criteria — a quarter of the score — and its double-barrelled name contains a trap: examiners assess both the logical progression of ideas (coherence) and the linking machinery (cohesion), and the band descriptors explicitly penalize overusing connectors — marks lost under the very criterion that rewards them.
What makes an essay coherent?
Three habits carry most of it: one controlling idea per paragraph, an order that would survive being summarized aloud, and transitions that state real relationships rather than decorate. The scene above is the test made visible — every mark in its slot and the row reads; let a single piece drift and it is noise again.
What is coherent light?
Light whose waves move in step — same frequency, constant phase relationship — which is what lets a laser hold a tight, powerful beam while sunlight, a jumble of out-of-step waves, spreads and softens. Physics borrowed the word's core meaning literally: waves that hold together can do what scattered ones cannot.
Is there a verb form of coherent?
Yes — cohere: 'the chapters cohere into a single argument'. It is formal and fairly rare, which makes it a quiet mark of range in academic writing. Its noun splits in two along the line drawn above: coherence for ideas holding together, cohesion for things (and sentences) physically sticking.