Crossword clues for absurd
absurd
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Absurd \Ab*surd"\ ([a^]b*s[^u]rd"), n.
An absurdity. [Obs.]
--Pope.
Absurd \Ab*surd"\ ([a^]b*s[^u]rd"), a. [L. absurdus harsh-sounding; ab + (prob) a derivative fr. a root svar to sound; not connected with surd: cf. F. absurde. See Syringe.] Contrary to reason or propriety; obviously and flatly opposed to manifest truth; inconsistent with the plain dictates of common sense; logically contradictory; nonsensical; ridiculous; as, an absurd person, an absurd opinion; an absurd dream.
This proffer is absurd and reasonless.
--Shak.
'This phrase absurd to call a villain great.
--Pope.
--p. 9
Syn: Foolish; irrational; ridiculous; preposterous; inconsistent; incongruous.
Usage: Absurd, Irrational, Foolish, Preposterous. Of these terms, irrational is the weakest, denoting that which is plainly inconsistent with the dictates of sound reason; as, an irrational course of life. Foolish rises higher, and implies either a perversion of that faculty, or an absolute weakness or fatuity of mind; as, foolish enterprises. Absurd rises still higher, denoting that which is plainly opposed to received notions of propriety and truth; as, an absurd man, project, opinion, story, argument, etc. Preposterous rises still higher, and supposes an absolute inversion in the order of things; or, in plain terms, a ``putting of the cart before the horse;'' as, a preposterous suggestion, preposterous conduct, a preposterous regulation or law.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1550s, from Middle French absurde (16c.), from Latin absurdus "out of tune; foolish" (see absurdity). The main modern sense (also present in Latin) is a figurative one, "out of harmony with reason or propriety." Related: Absurdly; absurdness.
Wiktionary
a. Contrary to reason or propriety; obviously and flatly opposed to manifest truth; inconsistent with the plain dictates of common sense; logically contradictory; nonsensical; ridiculous; silly. (First attested in the mid 16th century.)(reference-book editor=Lesley Brown title=The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary origyear=1933 edition=5th year=2003 publisher=Oxford University Press location=Oxford, UK isbn=978-0-19-860575-7 pages=10) n. 1 (context obsolete English) An absurdity. (Attested from the early 17th century until the mid 17th century.) 2 (context philosophy English) The opposition between the human search for meaning in life and the inability to find any; the state or condition in which man exists in an irrational universe and his life has no meaning outside of his existence. (First attested in the early 20th century.)
WordNet
adj. inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense; "the absurd predicament of seeming to argue that virtue is highly desirable but intensely unpleasant"- Walter Lippman [syn: unreasonable]
completely devoid of wisdom or good sense; "the absurd excuse that the dog ate his homework"; "that's a cockeyed idea"; "ask a nonsensical question and get a nonsensical answer"; "a contribution so small as to be laughable"; "it is ludicrous to call a cottage a mansion"; "a preposterous attempt to turn back the pages of history"; "her conceited assumption of universal interest in her rather dull children was ridiculous" [syn: cockeyed, derisory, idiotic, laughable, ludicrous, nonsensical, preposterous, ridiculous]
Wikipedia
Absurd or The Absurd may refer to:
- Absurdity, general and technical usage—associated with extremely poor reasoning, the ridiculous, or nonsense
- Absurdism, a philosophy born of existentialism, regarding the philosophical concept of "the Absurd," the clash between the human tendency to seek some inherent meaning in the universe and the human impossibility of finding meaning
- Absurd or surreal humour
- Absurdist fiction
- Absurd (band), a German metal band
- "Absurd" (song), a song by Fluke
- Theatre of the Absurd, an art form utilizing the philosophy of Absurdism
- Absurd, a term used in logic to describe a contradiction
- Reductio ad absurdum, a type of logical argument
- Absurd (film), a 1981 Italian film
Absurd is a German National Socialist black metal band, and has been classified as a "right-wing extremist" group by the Thuringian Landesbehörde für Verfassungsschutz.
The band was originally founded in Sondershausen by Hendrik Möbus (also known as - on the circuit and later on official Compact Cassette and later CD liner notes - as Randall Flagg / Jarl Flagg Nidhögg / JFN) and Sebastian Schauseil in 1992, with a third member, Andreas Kirchner, joining at a later stage.
Their lyrics concern nationalistic, pagan (Hendrik Möbus is the founder of the Deutsche Heidnische Front), pro-heathen revivalist Germanic, and anti- Judeo-Christian themes.
The band achieved infamy because its original members (now no longer in the band since 1999) murdered the 15-year-old Sandro Beyer in 1993. The canonical motive is that Beyer was privy to an illicit relationship of Schauseil's with a married woman, and had been spreading rumours about this and other activities of the band. On 29 April in Sondershausen, the then-17-year-old band members Möbus, Schauseil, and Kirchner enticed Beyer to a meeting, and strangled him there with an electrical cord. Kirchner, in a now infamous quotation, was reported as saying: “Oh shit—now I’ve completely ruined my life.” Schauseil claimed to have heard a voice in his head saying “Kuster Maier”, which made no sense but was interpreted by him as “töte Beyer” (‘kill Beyer’).
Absurd (Italian: Rosso Sangue; also known as Anthropophagus 2, Monster Hunter, Horrible and The Grim Reaper 2) is a 1981 Italian horror film directed by Joe D'Amato and written by George Eastman. The film is a follow-up to Antropophagus.
Absurd was one of the infamous Video Nasties of the United Kingdom, and became one of 39 titles to be successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Acts in 1984. It was originally released in both a cut and uncut version with identical sleeve design by Medusa Home Video in 1981. The original tape is sought-after and is an expensive collectable among fans.
It was released in 1980s in the United States as Monster Hunter by Wizard Video. To add to its questionable fame, the film inspired the name for German black metal act Absurd, whose members later switched their interest from gore films to far-right extremism and committed murder in 1993.
The film was considered, at the time of its release, as a "sequel" to the Zombi of horror films, under the title Zombie 6: Monster Hunter. An incorrect description on the back of the box promoted the film as a sequel to those zombie films for a period of time.
Usage examples of "absurd".
Christians reject the allegorizing of the Jews, and yet traditionally accept, on their authority, doctrines which can be deduced from their Scriptures in no other way than by the absurd hypothesis of a double or mystic sense.
Through the absurd extravagances of poets and augurs, and through the growth of critical thought, this unbelief went on increasing from the days of Anaxagoras, when it was death to call the sun a ball of fire, to the days of Catiline, when Julius Casar could be chosen Pontifex Maximus, almost before the Senate had ceased to reverberate his voice openly asserting that death was the utter end of man.
Starting from an antipodal position, Kundera shares with Leclerc that sense of hovering at the borderline where a thought or situation, stretched to maximum intensity, teeters on the brink of collapse into the ridiculous or the absurd.
A few saintly personalities stand out amidst a roiling sea of jealousies, ambition, backbiting, suppression of dissent, and absurd conceits.
They thought it equally absurd and sinful for a man to carry his income on his back, and bedizen himself out in reds, blues, and greens, ribbons, knots, slashes, and treble quadruple daedalian ruffs, built up on iron and timber, which have more arches in them for pride than London Bridge for use.
No, it was too absurd, and, if Gordon had a wife of his own, why in the name of justice should not Bernard have one?
The north of Europe has its Gascons as well as the south of France, and the junior portion of the Russian army at this period assumed an absurd braggadocio tone.
The price of provisions, and bread in particular, being raised to an exorbitant rate in consequence of an absurd exportation of corn, for the sake of the bounty, a formidable body of colliers, and other labouring people, raised an insurrection at Bristol, began to plunder the corn vessels in the harbour, and commit such outrages in the city, that the magistrates were obliged to have recourse to military power.
An absurd thought flashed into his mind: did somebody not tell him once that Roy Mallender had boxed for Millfield?
Persons like Larcom do make such absurd blunders, and so misapprehend the conversation of educated people.
These three persons, thus accused, were brought to the bar of the house, notwithstanding the strenuous remonstrances of several members, who opposed this method of proceeding, as a species of oppression equally arbitrary and absurd.
She leaves him gentle and absurd gifts as apology currants, offprints, lozenges at the first hint of a cough.
When the thing is maintained, not as a mere windy sentimentality, but with some notion of carrying it logically, the result is invariably a display of paralogy so absurd that it becomes pathetic.
It is an absurd disregard of a natural economy to leave the innate philoprogenitiveness of either sex uncultivated.
His expression was as simple as resentment without understanding can be: now like plesiosaurus laboring all four limbs for the paddles they were, lifting a small head to see pterodactyl raise its absurd body on more absurd wings and with cumbrous scaling gain the sky, a ridiculous place to be, certainly, but for that moment he watched, disconcerting to plesiosaurus, to whom no such extravagance had ever occurred and who, by no feat of skill or imagination, could hope to accomplish it now.