congruous
adjective
George Bernard Shaw
Did you know?
Congruous had only been part of the English language for a few decades in 1615, when a book about the Church of Rome referred to “teaching most congruous to reason.” The word has remained more or less true to its Latin roots: it comes from Latin congruus, an adjective that comes from the verb congruere, meaning “to come together” or “to agree.” (Its more common antonym, incongruous is about the same age.) Another familiar congruere descendant in English is congruent, which first appeared at least a century earlier with the same meaning as congruous. English also acquired congrue, a verb meaning “to be in harmony” or “to agree,” from congruere, but it has since become obsolete.
Synonyms of congruous
Examples of congruous in a Sentence
Wendy Altschuler, Forbes, 3 Sep. 2024
On the pool deck, a minimalist railing acts as a congruous border to this backyard retreat.
—Rachel Silva, ELLE Decor, 24 May 2023
Dripping noses, sneezes, and a stressful mission did not make for congruous relations with Mission Control.
—Ben Evans, Discover Magazine, 5 Jan. 2023
Women organize into efficient and congruous guilds.
—Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 16 June 2022
To speak of the Los Angeles riots, therefore, is to speak of dozens of events involving multiple cities and counties, an overlapping but not always congruous set of memories and perspectives that do not neatly map onto one another.
—New York Times, 28 Apr. 2022
And getting quantum computers to outlearn traditional machines means finding AI problems that boil down to mathematical operations congruous with quantum physics.
—Quanta Magazine, 4 Feb. 2022
Cite this Entry
“Congruous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/congruous. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
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congruous
adjective
