ˈrelevance
[See next and -ance.]
Relevancy; spec. in recent use, pertinency to important current issues (as education to one's later career, etc.); social or vocational relevancy.
| 1733 Innes View Laws Scot. 11 The Relevance being determined,..the Probation proceeds in the next Place. 1865 Lecky Ration. (1878) II. 98 The main principle upon which the relevance of this species of narrative depends. 1890 Spectator 19 Apr. 536/2 What relevance had such a fact to the duty of the hour? 1949 Poetry (Chicago) Feb. 299 Tate holds that the poem is autonomous, and that the only relevance the subject-ideas have is to each other within the formal meaning of the work itself. 1955 Bull. Atomic Sci. Apr. 126/1 Relevance is another one of these non-assessable quantities which circumstances require to be assessed. 1970 Time 30 Nov. 40 The impetus came largely from student demands for ‘relevance’, especially for the overdue admission of more minority-group students. Activism has also done much to curb the old absurdities of trivial research and needless PH.D.s. 1975 Language for Life (Dept. Educ. & Sci.) ix. 129 We have heard the case for ‘relevance’ carried to the point of excluding fantasy or any stories with settings or characters unfamiliar to the pupils from their first-hand experience. 1975 Times 12 Feb. 11/7 Hal [sc. a novel]—while laudable in its social intentions—is little more than a piecing together of stock responses to the current demand for ‘relevance’. 1977 Chem. in Brit. Mar. 105/3 It may seem anomalous in these days of ‘relevance’ philosophy in tertiary education that the average student of chemistry gets little inkling from his teachers..of the vast practical importance of disperse systems in industry. 1978 New Scientist 21 Sept. 850/2 ‘Relevance’ in research implies both social efficacy and psychic commitment by the research worker. |