discrepancy

discrepancy

English

WOTD – 6 August 2006

Alternative forms

Etymology

    Borrowed from Latin discrepantia, from discrepans, from discrepō, from crepō. By surface analysis, discrepant +‎ -cy. See also discrepant.

    Pronunciation

    Noun

    discrepancy (countable and uncountable, plural discrepancies)

    1. An inconsistency between facts or sentiments.
      They found a discrepancy between the first set of test results and the second, and they're still trying to figure out why.
      • 1981, John Updike, Rabbit is Rich:
        Still, there is pilferage, mysterious discrepancies eating into the percentages.
      • 2013 June 7, Gary Younge, “Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution”, in The Guardian Weekly[1], volume 188, number 26, archived from the original on 6 June 2019, page 18:
        WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, […]. They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies.
    2. The state or quality of being discrepant.

    Quotations

    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:discrepancy.

    Synonyms

    Derived terms

    Translations