Word of the Day Archive
Sunday May 4, 2008
disparate \DIS-puh-rit; dis-PAIR-it\ , adjective:
1. Fundamentally different or distinct in quality or kind.
2. Composed of or including markedly dissimilar elements.
Science at its best isolates a common element underlying many seemingly disparate phenomena.
-- John Horgan, The Undiscovered Mind
A Region Not Home," though it encompasses topics as seemingly disparate as Shakespeare, football, suicide, racism and Disneyland, actually has considerable thematic coherence.
-- Phillip Lopate, "Dreaming of Elsewhere", New York Times, February 27, 2000
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary.
-- T.S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets"
Disparate comes from the past participle of Latin disparare, "to separate," from dis-, "apart" + parare, "to prepare."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for disparate
