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/ɪrˈæʃənəl/ Listen

adjective

irrational adj.

Not rational; void of reason or understanding; as, brutes are irrational animals.

Not according to reason; having no rational basis; clearly contrary to reason; easily disproved by reasoning; absurd; of assertions and beliefs. Hence, of actions: Foolish; unreasonable. "It seemed utterly irrational any longer to maintain it."

(Math.) Not capable of being exactly expressed by an integral number, nor by a ratio of integral numbers; surd; said especially of roots. See Surd.

Synonyms: Absurd; foolish; preposterous; unreasonable; senseless. See Absurd.

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Etymology of 'Irrational'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Irrational" Quotes from Famous Books

... epistle and placed it in its envelope; then she sat musing. How cruel it would be to break this butterfly on the wheel of bitter circumstance! It would be irrational, she thought, "to expect the strength that could submit to and endure the inevitable from her. She will at once suffer more and less than my Katie. Small exterior things will sting Ada and make her miserable. As long as Katherine's heart is satisfied all else ...

— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... nature. To suppose the existence of powers as the cause of the operations of nature—powers destitute of life, and, at the same time, self-moving, and acting upon matter without the intervention of extrinsic agency, is just as irrational as to suppose such a power in a machine, and is a gross absurdity and a self-contradiction. But to suppose that these lifeless energies, even if possessed of such qualities, could, void of intelligence, produce such ...

— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... she chiefly admired in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage—nothing superfluous. No flushes—that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up:—that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; ...

— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... nor ancient, nor remarkable in any point of view. We found in it a monument of the revolution, which I never saw elsewhere, and which I never expected to see at all. The age of reason was a sadly irrational age.—The tablet containing the rights and duties of man, disposed in two columns, like the tables of the Mosaic law, is still suffered to exist in the church, though shorn of all its republican dignity, and degraded into the front ...

— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... where that emotion might lead him. He recognized the astonishing power of passion. It troubled him, stirred up an amazing conflict at times between his reason and his impulses. He fell back always upon the conclusion that love was an irrational thing anyway, that it should not be permitted to upset a man's logical plan of existence. But he was never very sure that this conclusion ...

— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

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