metaconsensus means A general agreement about the nature of an issue but not necessarily about the outcome of it. It carries an Arena rating of 1322, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, metaconsensus ranks #1,115 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #1,236 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #3,635 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #10,090 of 17,135 for Most Malleable Words.
Why “metaconsensus” is a great word
The shared understanding of what a disagreement is fundamentally about, distinct from any agreement on how to resolve it. From the prefix meta- (meaning 'beyond' or 'about') + consensus (from Latin cōnsēnsus, 'agreement, accord'). Unlike a consensus, which demands uniform conclusions, or a compromise, which brokers trades on specific outcomes, a metaconsensus is the prior accord on the map’s legend—the shared acknowledgment of which borders are contested and what the terrain is made of. It is the climate scientist and the skeptic agreeing on the physics of the greenhouse effect before clashing over policy; it is warring philosophers accepting the same set of logical axioms before drawing opposite conclusions; it is the quiet, procedural harmony that makes profound discord not only possible but meaningful—the fragile, invisible latticework upon which the noisy scaffolding of public dispute is erected.
Etymology
From meta- + consensus.
noun
- A general agreement about the nature of an issue but not necessarily about the outcome of it
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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