consistent

Pluralconsistents

1. 1
   adjective

   Marked by regular, dependable occurrence or performance; steady in quality or behavior over time.

   The pitcher has been remarkably consistent this season, rarely allowing more than two runs.

   Customers come back because the bakery delivers consistent quality every day.

   Similarsteady, reliable, dependable, regular, constant

   Oppositeinconsistent, erratic, unreliable, variable

   Note

   The Latin behind every sense here is cōnsistēns, from cōnsistō, "to agree with; to continue": con-, "together," plus sistō, "to cause to stand." This sense keeps the "continue" strand, describing what stands the same way each time. Of people it usually takes in: consistent in his political choices. Ephraim Chambers could still write of "consistent bodies" in 1728, setting them beside solid, hard and fixed ones.

2. 2
   adjective

   In agreement or accordance with something else; compatible and free of conflict.

   The witness's testimony was consistent with the forensic evidence.

   Their lavish spending is not consistent with a family on a tight budget.

   Similarcompatible, conformable

   Oppositeinconsistent, incompatible, contradictory, incongruous

   Note

   Here the word looks outward, and it almost always takes with: testimony consistent with the evidence, choices more consistent with our aims. That preposition is the quickest way to tell it from the "steady" meaning, which takes in or stands alone. It carries on the "agree with" half of the Latin cōnsistō, and its older synonym is conformable. Not consistent with is the usual way to point out a mismatch.

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a set of statements: free of logical contradiction, so that no contradiction can be derived from the statements taken together.

   Mathematicians verified that the new axioms are consistent before building further results on them.

   His sworn statements were consistent, with no contradiction arising among them.

   Similarcoherent

   Oppositeinconsistent, contradictory

   Note

   The logician's version judges a whole set at once. Either no contradiction can be derived from the statements taken together, or the set is inconsistent. Charles Petzold's The Annotated Turing (2008) describes this property in the axioms of geometry: they could never lead to contradictions. Unlike the "in agreement" meaning, which compares one thing with another, it needs no outside standard. A set is consistent or not on its own.

4. 4
   nounhistoricalcountable

   In the early Eastern Orthodox Church, a penitent who was allowed to assist at the prayers but was not permitted to receive the holy sacraments.

   As a consistent, he stood through the entire liturgy but stepped aside when the faithful approached the altar.

   The old priest reminded the consistents that their place was among the prayers, not at the chalice.

   Note

   This term comes from the penitential discipline of the early Eastern Church, which divided penitents into four classes. The consistentes, Greek systantes, were the last. William Addis and Thomas Arnold (1884) describe them as standing together with the faithful and not leaving with the catechumens. That makes the "standing together" of the Latin root literal. In English the plural is consistents, and the word now appears only in historical writing.

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