Word of the Day

: July 20, 2019

cogent

adjective KOH-junt

What It Means

1 a : appealing forcibly to the mind or reason : convincing

b : pertinent, relevant

2 : having power to compel or constrain

cogent in Context

At the town meeting, citizens presented many cogent arguments in support of building a new senior center.

"The council made the difficult decision to raise property taxes by a total of 6 cents…. [The] decision to earmark the full 4 cents for educational capital expenditures was a difficult one, and there were cogent, logical arguments to be made in favor of keeping the city's options open regarding the use of funds." — Kate McConnell and Anthony Smith, The Roanoke (Virginia) Times, 21 Apr. 2019

Did You Know?

"Trained, knowledgeable agents make cogent suggestions ... that make sense to customers." It makes sense for us to include that comment from the president of a direct marketing consulting company because it provides such a nice opportunity to point out the etymological relationship between the words cogent and agent. Agent derives from the Latin verb agere, which means "to drive," "to lead," or "to act." Adding the prefix co- to agere gave Latin cogere, a word that literally means "to drive together"; that ancient term ultimately gave English cogent. Something that is cogent figuratively pulls together thoughts and ideas, and the cogency of an argument depends on the driving intellectual force behind it.