Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Pertinence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The quality of being pertinent to the matter at hand; relevance.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun relevance by virtue of being applicable to the matter at hand

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin pertinere

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Examples

  • With a writer of my prosaic literalness and pertinency of point of view, this all shoves toward grossness — positively even towards the far more damnable closeness.

    Vailima Letters 2005

  • You need be under no apprehension from the memory of the past, in which you may have observed the power of that people and their pertinency in self-defense; though these might reasonably excite fear, if they were still animated by the valor of former times.

    The History of Florence 2003

  • And, besides, to understand the said caveat of loose believers overthrows the pertinency of it to their cause who insist upon it to prove a due consistency between exhortations to perseverance and promises to perseverance, as is evident.

    The Doctrine of the Saints��� Perseverance Explained and Confirmed 1616-1683 1966

  • The world will always be grateful to the people of Vietnam for having shown it how the size of a country is immaterial, how the number of the foe matters not, how the power of an enemy is of no pertinency.

    13TH ANNIVERSARY OF ATTACK ON MONCADA BARRACKS 1966

  • It is this quality, according to the opinion of those best acquainted with Mr. Beecher's oratory, which combined with his marvelous power of illustration, marvelous alike for its intense vividness and unerring pertinency, and his great flexibility whereby he seemed to adapt himself completely to the exigency of the instant gave him rare command over a popular assemblage.

    Hidden Treasures Or, Why Some Succeed While Others Fail Harry A. Lewis

  • The observance of this plain rule would economise space, save the time which might otherwise be occupied in useless research, and tend to produce more pertinency of reply.

    Notes and Queries, Number 19, March 9, 1850 Various

  • To the pertinency of this question to the present treatise the author has been deeply sensible, and therefore cannot forbear a few prefatory words of explanation of his object and method.

    The Basis of Early Christian Theism Lawrence Thomas Cole

  • In this case the members of the House by special rule limited themselves to half an hour in the delivery of their speeches, which were consequently marked by great pertinency and condensation.

    History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States William Horatio Barnes

  • It was suggested, with some pertinency as it afterward appeared, that the people of the State having declared in the recently adopted Constitution, that a judge, holding office during good behaviour, ought not to be a candidate for an elective office, would resent such a nomination.

    A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

  • If ever an explanation lacked pertinency, it does so in this case, in which the succumbing group is represented by gigantic and well preserved animal forms, widely distributed and accustomed to the most varied methods of nutrition, whereas the competitor appears in the form of small, harmless marsupials.

    At the Deathbed of Darwinism A Series of Papers Eberhard Dennert

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