▪ I. concordance, n.
(kənˈkɔːdəns)
[ME. concorˈdance, a. F. concordance (12th c.):—late L. concordāntia, f. concordānt-em: see concordant and -ance.]
1. The fact of agreeing or being concordant; agreement, harmony.
| c 1450 Castle Hd. Life St. Cuthbert (Surtees) 3686 Aythir to othir haue concordans. 1481 Caxton Myrr. i. v. 27 They fonde the science of musyque for to sette alle thinges in concordaunce. 1576 Fleming Panopl. Epist. A ij b, By a concordance or agreement of circumstaunces. 1602 Warner Alb. Eng. Epit. (1612) 365 Hardly find I heerein a concordance in any two Authors. 1855 E. Forbes Lit. Papers vi. 166 There should..be a concordance in the arrangements of the recent and fossil collections. 1865 Cornh. Mag. XI. 512 Such a concordance of opinion in the representatives. |
b. (with pl.) An instance of agreement or accord.
| 1605 Bacon Adv. Learn. ii. i. 10 The nature of this great Citie of the world..must bee first sought in meane concordances, and small portions. 1851 Carlyle Sterling ii. i. (1872) 89 Contrasts, and yet concordances. 1885 R. L. Stevenson in Contemp. Rev. Apr. 557 The art of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature. |
† 2. spec. A treaty, agreement, or compact. Obs.
| c 1489 Caxton Sonnes of Aymon ix. 220 Telle me where the concordauns shall be made. |
† 3. Gram. = concord n. 6. Obs.
| 1570 R. Ascham Scholem. (Arb.) 26 The three Concordances learned..let the master read vnto hym the Epistles of Cicero. |
† 4. An agreeable or satisfactory blending of musical sounds or notes; harmony; = concord 4.
| 1513 Bradshaw St. Werburge i. 1692 Dyuers other mynstrelles..Made swete concordaunce. 1579 E. K. in Spenser's Sheph. Cal. Ep. Ded., Oftentimes a dischorde in Musick maketh a comely concordaunce. 1674 Playford Skill Mus. Pref. 1 A true Concordance of sounds or Harmony. |
† 5. A composition combining and harmonizing various accounts; a harmony. Obs.
| 1494 Fabyan 5 For this boke Includyth Storyes fele..Therfore this name it shall nowe purchace, ‘Concordaunce of Storyes’. a 1661 Fuller Worthies (1840) II. 573 His ‘Concordance on the Evangelists’ was..a worthy work, to shew the harmony betwixt those four writers. |
† 6. A citation of parallel passages in a book, esp. in the Bible. Obs.
| 1538 Coverdale N.T. title-p., With a true Concordaunce in the margent. a 1714 Burnet Own Time (1766) I. 267 A long opening of a text with the concordance of every word in it. |
b. An alphabetical arrangement of the principal words contained in a book, with citations of the passages in which they occur. These were first made for the Bible; hence Johnson's explanation ‘A book which shows in how many texts of scripture any word occurs’. Orig. in pl. (med.L. concordantiæ), each group of parallel passages being properly a concordantia.
This is sometimes denominated a verbal concordance as distinguished from a real concordance which is an index of subjects or topics.
| 1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) VIII. 235 Frere Hewe [ob. 1262]..þat expownede al þe bible, and made a greet concordaunce [Harl. MS. concordances] uppon þe bible. 1460 J. Capgrave Chron. 154 Hewe [of S. Victor]..was eke the first begynner of the Concordauns, whech is a tabil onto the Bibil. 1550 Marbeck (title) A Concordance, that is to saie, a Worke wherein by the Ordre of the Letters of the A.B.C. ye maie redely finde any Worde conteigned in the whole Bible. 1561 T. Norton Calvin's Inst. Pref. to Contents, They followed the Concordances of the Bible, called the great Concordances, which is collected according to the common translation. a 1631 Donne in Select. (1840) 192 To search the Scriptures, not as though thou wouldst make a concordance, but an application. 1665 Boyle Occas. Refl. Pref. (1675) 27, I had not a Bible or Concordance at hand. 1737 Cruden (title) Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testament. 1828 E. Irving Last Days 37 A simple reference to the concordance..will serve to clear up these prophetic matters. 1837 Penny Cycl. VII. 434/2 The compiler of the first concordance in any language was Hugo de St. Caro, or Cardinal Hugo, who died in 1262. 1845 Mrs. C. Clarke (title) Concordance to Shakespeare. 1869 D. B. Brightwell (title) A Concordance to the entire Works of Alfred Tennyson. |
| fig. 1741 Watts Improv. Mind i. i. §5 Memorino has learnt half the Bible by heart, and is become a living concordance. |
attrib. and comb.
| 1856 S. R. Maitland False Worship 163 All that the concordance-maker can tell us about it. Ibid. 196 Finding so much discordance in the concordance part of his work. |
▪ II. conˈcordance, v.
[f. prec. n.]
trans. To make a concordance to.
| 1888 Athenæum 6 Oct. 450/1 The difficult ‘Astrolabe’, which they concordanced some years ago. |
Add: conˈcordancing vbl. n.
| 1976 Bull. Board Celtic Stud. Nov. 45 (heading) Automated concordancing of Welsh dialects with output in the IPA. 1982 Papers Dict. Soc. N. Amer. 1979 142 The application of computer concordancing techniques to dictionary definitions promises to be a useful technique. 1989 Lit. & Linguistic Computing IV. 106/1 The move towards combining database management systems and concordancing programs was..a logical one. |
conˈcordanced ppl. a.
| 1986 ICAME News May 22 A larger corpus, of twenty to twenty-five million words, again in concordanced format, could be transferred to compact disk, and distributed with accompanying software. 1992 English Today July 28/1 The value of concordanced information is..[that] the grammatical patterning which is typical of a lexical item emerges very clearly when there are plentiful examples. |