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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
inordinate
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
amount
▪ Either keeping personal creditors accounts or making sundry creditors adjustments can consume inordinate amounts of administrative and accounting time.
▪ We were spending an inordinate amount of time sending people to different meetings and not knowing what was going on.
▪ In the Soviet context an inordinate amount of attention has been paid to the willed aims of Bolshevik leaders.
▪ But in reality, seat-side service is only feasible for those with teeny appetites and an inordinate amount of patience.
▪ That is why the social anthropologists are justified in devoting such an inordinate amount of attention to the field of kinship.
▪ But the Minnesota Timberwolves, who own the fifth pick, have shown an inordinate amount of interest in Nash.
▪ They devote an inordinate amount of time, effort and resource to developing high-calibre managers.
▪ We found ourselves spending an inordinate amount of time in the chariot, chasing hither and yon.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a man of inordinate ambition
▪ an inordinate number of meetings
▪ Scientists have been criticized for devoting an inordinate amount of time to research on animals.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Inordinate

Inordinate \In*or"di*nate\, a. [L. inordinatus disordered. See In- not, and Ordinate.] Not limited to rules prescribed, or to usual bounds; irregular; excessive; immoderate; as, an inordinate love of the world. ``Inordinate desires.''
--Milton. ``Inordinate vanity.''
--Burke. -- In*or"di*nate*ly, adv. -- In*or"di*nate*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
inordinate

late 14c., "not ordered, lacking order or regularity," from Latin inordinatus "unordered, not arranged," from in- "not, opposite of" (see in- (1)) + ordinatus, past participle of ordinare "to set in order" (see order). Sense of "immoderate, excessive" is from notion of "not kept within orderly limits." Related: Inordinately; inordinateness.

Wiktionary
inordinate

a. excessive; unreasonable or inappropriate in magnitude; extreme.

WordNet
inordinate

adj. beyond normal limits; "excessive charges"; "a book of inordinate length"; "his dress stops just short of undue elegance"; "unreasonable demands" [syn: excessive, undue, unreasonable]

Usage examples of "inordinate".

The man did not want telling twice, and avenged himself for the abuse he had received by the inordinate length of his bill.

In order to understand the question at issue, it must be observed that the fomes is nothing but a certain inordinate, but habitual, concupiscence of the sensitive appetite, for actual concupiscence is a sinful motion.

Now lust implies inordinate concupiscence, not entirely subject to reason: and therefore, if the fomes were entirely taken away as to personal corruption, it could not remain as to the corruption of nature.

Gerald Sessions, my superior, a spindly black man with a handsome, open face and freckly light complexion and spidery arms that possessed inordinate strength.

It was Gerald Sessions, my superior, a spindly black man with a handsome, open face and freckly light complexion and spidery arms that possessed inordinate strength.

He seems a perfectly ordinary man to me, aside from his police powers, yet he has inordinate success with the fair sex.

Clearly in this instance, the suit polymer must require an inordinate amount of control to hold its shape, presumably far beyond the capacity of the alien motile brain to govern.

Local tradesmen spoke of the queerness of the orders brought them by the evil-looking mulatto, and in particular of the inordinate amounts of mean and fresh blood secured from the two butcher shops in the immediate neighbourhood.

And after that I had a little rowsed vp my mynde, and sommoned together my sences in some better sort: I sought a meanes to quench my inordinate thyrst, procured and increased through innumerable sighes, and extreame labour of body.

Duke of Austria, and several other princes, announcing a resolution similar to that of Philip, and in no modified terms, assigning, for their defection from the cause of the Cross, the inordinate ambition and arbitrary domination of Richard of England.

After that the banket was prepared, they washed their bodies, and brought in a tall young man of the village, to sup with them, who had scarce tasted a few pottage, when hee began to discover their beastly customes and inordinate desire of luxury.

Inordinate unvaried length, sheer longinquity, staggers the heart, ages the very heart of us at a view.

It is as if some great magnifico male, some inordinate czar or kaiser, should step down from the throne to play dominoes with him behind the door.

After the ladies had departed for the ball, whither all the entreaties of Madame de Villefort had failed in persuading him to accompany them, the procureur had shut himself up in his study, according to his custom, with a heap of papers calculated to alarm any one else, but which generally scarcely satisfied his inordinate desires.

The tinnitus was operational pretty well full time, and that toothache of mine got much more complicated: it would kick me awake with sirens of pain, loud, inordinate, braiding, twisting, like currents in a river.