incommensurable
adjective
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Commensurable means "having a common measure" or "corresponding in size, extent, amount, or degree." Its antonym incommensurable generally refers to things that are unlike and incompatible, sharing no common ground ("incommensurable theories"), or to things that are very disproportionate, often to the point of defying comparison ("incommensurable crimes"). Both words entered English in the 1500s and were originally used (as they still can be) for numbers that have or don't have a common divisor. They came to English by way of Middle French and Late Latin, ultimately deriving from the Latin noun mensura, meaning "measure." Mensura is also an ancestor of commensurate (meaning "coextensive" or "proportionate") and incommensurate ("disproportionate" or "insufficient"), which overlap in meaning with commensurable and incommensurable but are not exact synonyms.
Examples of incommensurable in a Sentence
Literary Hub,
18 May 2026
But decisions required human judgment across incommensurable values.
—
Joseph Byrum,
Forbes.com,
23 Feb. 2026
Maintaining the fiction of continuity after the incommensurable discontinuity of Hutchins’s death is, at best, a highly questionable choice.
—
Richard Brody,
New Yorker,
20 May 2025
After 15 months of fighting, the IDF’s losses are incommensurable with Hamas’s.
—
Hussein Ibish,
The Atlantic,
19 Jan. 2025
If human values are incommensurable and sometimes flat-out incompatible, that means no single political arrangement can satisfy all legitimate human values simultaneously.
—
Sigal Samuel,
Vox,
7 Dec. 2018
Cite this Entry
“Incommensurable.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incommensurable. Accessed 6 Jul. 2026.
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