incompatible, a. (n.)
(ɪnkəmˈpætɪb(ə)l)
[ad. med.L. incompatibilis (said of benefices); cf. F. incompatible (15th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), and see in-3 and compatible.]
A. adj. Not compatible.
1. Of benefices, etc.: Incapable of being held together. [med.L. incompatibilis.]
| 1563–87 Foxe A. & M. (1596) 3/2 For infinite dispensations, as to dispense with age, with order, with benefices incompatible. 1637–50 Row Hist. Kirk (1842) 57 Inacted, aganis pluralitie of offices incompatible in one man's persone. 1726 Ayliffe Parergon 115 By the Canon Law Incompatible Benefices are Dignities, Parsonages and other Benefices, which do by some Statute or approv'd Custom require a Personal Residence. 1872 O. Shipley Gloss. Eccl. Terms, Benefice incompatible, means one which cannot be held with another. |
2. a. Mutually intolerant; incapable of existing together in the same subject; contrary or opposed in character; discordant, incongruous, inconsistent.
| 1592 Daniel Rosamond I iij, As heere beholde th' incompatible blood Of age and youth. 1628 T. Spencer Logick 75 When the subiect, and the thing dissenting, doth abhorre each other, and are..incompatible, than there is a totall opposition betweene them. 1692 Bentley Boyle Lect. ii. 66 The ideas of Matter and Thought are absolutely incompatible. 1755 Fox in H. Walpole Mem. Geo. II (1847) II. ii. 37 Yet..are we on incompatible lines? 1816 T. L. Peacock Headlong Hall vii, Luxury and liberty are incompatible. 1871 Blackie Four Phases i. 18 He felt that to be a politician and a preacher of righteousness was to combine two vocations practically incompatible. |
b. Const. with.
| a 1635 Naunton Fragm. Reg. (Arb.) 24 A prudence which was incompatible with her Sisters nature. 1781 Gibbon Decl. & F. xxvii. III. 68 The use of the shield is incompatible with that of the bow. 1832 tr. Sismondi's Ital. Rep. xv. 319 Law and order seemed incompatible with the government of priests. |
† c. Const. to. (Sometimes confused with incompetible.) Obs.
| 1641 R. Greville (Ld. Brooke) Episc. 113 A trade, which yet they thinke not altogether incompatible to Preaching. 1652 Gaule Magastrom. 75 Is not the prescience or prævision of future things..incompatible to the nature of any creature in heaven or earth? 1668 Howe Bless. Righteous (1825) 101 Balaam knew it was incompatible to Him to lie or repent. 1790 A. M. Johnson Monmouth III. 11 She knew the unconditional liberation..was incompatible to his Lordship's professions. |
† d. Const. of: Intolerant of. Obs.
| 1605 Raleigh Introd. Hist. Eng. (1693) 34 The English Nobility, incompatible of these new Concurrents, found..a darkning of their Dignities by the Interposition of so many. 1613–18 Daniel Coll. Hist. Eng. (1621) 24 A Nobilitie, stubborne, haughty, and incompatible of each other's precedency. 1646 Buck Rich. III 51 He was now incompatible of any others precedency and propinquity. |
† 3. Unable to agree or ‘get on’ together; disagreeing, at variance. Obs.
| 1567 Throgmorton Let. to Eliz. in Robertson Hist. Scot. (1759) II. App., The earle of Argyll, the Hamiltons and he be incompatible.—I do find amongest the Hamiltons, Argyll and the company two strange and sundry humours. 1605 Bacon Adv. Learn. ii. xxii. §13 Is there not a caution..to be giuen of the doctrines of Moralities themselues..leaste they make men too precise, arrogant, incompatible? a 1659 Osborn Defect. Rowe Wks. (1673) 396 By which they have rendered themselves incompatible with any other Tenets than their own. 1722 De Foe Plague (1884) 298 The Quarel remain'd, the Church and the Presbyterians were incompatible. |
† 4. Irreconcilable. Obs. rare.
| 1623 Cockeram, Incompactible, vnreconcilable. 1635 R. Bolton Comf. Affl. Consc. xvii. 321 They set themselves against godly Christians with incompatible estrangement, and implacable spite. |
5. Pharm. Of a drug: reacting or interfering with another (specified) substance in such a way that the two should not be mixed or prescribed together; unsuited to simultaneous administration to a patient.
| 1812 J. A. Paris Pharmacologia p. vii, The incompatible substances, i.e. all those which are capable of destroying its properties, or rendering its flavour, or aspect, unpleasant, or disgusting. 1855 R. G. Mayne Expos. Lex. Med. Sci. (1860) 519/1 Incompatible, applied to substances which act chemically on each other, and which therefore cannot with propriety be prescribed together. 1881 R. Farquharson Guide to Therapeutics (ed. 2) 24 Infusions containing tannic acid are incompatible with metallic salts generally. 1898 E. W. Lucas Pract. Pharmacy xliv. 299 Incompatible substances cannot exist together in solution without mutual decomposition. Ibid. 301 Sodium bicarbonate is incompatible with solution of strychnia. 1917 E. A. Ruddiman Incompatibilities in Prescriptions (ed. 4) p. iii, The second object of the writer is to furnish the student of pharmacy with a list of incompatible prescriptions in such form that he may find out for himself what the trouble is. 1970 Goodman & Gilman Pharmacol. Basis Therapeutics (ed. 4) 1716/1 Cationic substances and anionic substances..are often incompatible with each other. |
6. Biol. a. Exhibiting or causing incompatibility (sense 4 a). Const. with.
| 1904 Mass. Agric. Exper. Station Techn. Bull. No. 2. 14 When the two members are unlike in nature and in some way physiologically incompatible (whatever that may mean), the wound does not heal readily, owing to some sort of irritation which continues to be felt at this point. 1918 Jrnl. Immunol. III. 99 A patient of group I, for example, requires a donor of group I, the blood of all other groups being incompatible. 1936 Jrnl. Pomol. XIV. 360 Later, the sour orange also proved to be incompatible as a stock with imported varieties of this species. 1962 J. D. Smyth Introd. Animal Parasitol. xxxii. 371 Physiological resistance. This type of resistance is due to some aspect of the host physiology being incompatible with that of the invading parasite at some stage in its life history. 1966 Wright & Symmers Systemic Path. I. iv. 151/2 For transfusions..under no circumstances should the donor's red cells be incompatible with the recipient's plasma. 1971 Canad. Jrnl. Bot. XLIX. 303 (heading) Transfer of 35S from wheat to the powdery mildew fungus with compatible and incompatible parasite/host genotypes. |
b. Having or exhibiting incompatibility (sense 4 b); unable to cross.
| 1905 Biol. Bull. VIII. 323 No eggs segmented, but neither did the eggs in the check experiment in sea water, showing that the eggs or the sperm were poor, or else incompatible. 1913 W. Bateson Probl. Genetics xi. 239, I first tried Cinerarias, which are usually self-sterile, but I found no incompatible pairs of plants. 1916 Mem. N.Y. Bot. Garden VI. 419 The parent species were cross-incompatible. 1937 Gwynne-Vaughan & Barnes Struct. & Devel. Fungi (ed. 2) 5 Often, in these self-incompatible fungi, the sexual apparatus has partially or wholly disappeared. 1967 Briggs & Knowles Introd. Plant Breeding xv. 187 In Gasteria, pollen germination and tube development were not affected in incompatible pollinations. |
B. n. An incompatible person or thing.
| a 1711 Ken Psyche Poet. Wks. 1721 IV. 280, I am all Resignation, all Desire. How can these Incompatibles conspire? 1751 Harris Hermes Wks. (1841) 183 Such syntax is in fact a blending of incompatibles; that is to say, of a defined substantive with an undefined attributive. 1848 H. Rogers Ess. I. vi. 305 This union of incompatibles. 1885 Pall Mall G. 9 June 1/2 He might shed his incapables and his incompatibles, and build up a new Cabinet. |