preposterous
/pɹɪˈpɒstəɹəs/
preposterous means absurd, or contrary to common sense. It carries an Arena rating of 1761, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, preposterous ranks #36 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #257 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #321 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say, #1,497 of 17,163 for Funniest Words.
preposterous is pronounced /pɹɪˈpɒstəɹəs/.
Why “preposterous” is a great word
Utterly absurd or contrary to reason and common sense. From Latin praeposterus ("with the hinder part before, reversed, inverted, perverted"), from prae ("before") + posterus ("coming after"), first attested in English in the 1540s. Unlike "fanciful," which suggests the whimsical and imaginative, or "improbable," which merely strains credulity, preposterous declares a fundamental inversion of order. It is a cart hitched before the horse, a verdict delivered before the crime, or the sun rising in the west — a spectacle so nonsensical it feels less like an error than a perversion of reality's grammar, a quiet reminder that reason, too, has its breaking point.
Etymology
From Latin praeposterus (“with the hinder part before, reversed, inverted, perverted”), from prae (“before”) + posterus (“coming after”).
adj
- Absurd, or contrary to common sense.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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