intempestivity

English

WOTD – 10 December 2009

Etymology

From the Latin intempestīvitās; cognate with the French intempestivité.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: ĭntĕmpĕstĭʹvĭtē, IPA^(key): /ɪntɛmpɛˈstɪvɪti/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

Noun

intempestivity (uncountable)

1. Unseasonability; untimeliness.
   • 1957, Renato Poggioli, The Phoenix and the Spider: A Book of Essays About Some Russian Writers and Their View of the Self, Harvard University Press, page 191:

     This “untimeliness” has nothing to do with the “intempestivity” of Nietzsche, which implies a denial of the present and an affirmation of future values.

   • 1974, Michael Pertwee, Name Dropping: The Autobiography of Michael Pertwee, Frewin, →ISBN, page 71:

     I do not know if he wrote his own script, but whoever did, his subsequent pep talk was a masterpiece of intempestivity.

   • 1979, James Patrick Donleavy, Schultz, Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, →ISBN, page 329:

     “O dear Schultz, here we go again. Same old headline. Sperm Productions, that innocent company dragged yet again into another Schultz intempestivity. With Gayboy already in a state. Raging that the show is giving the theatre such a bad name that it could ruin business for years to come. And dear me this little news item will promptly blow his hemorrhoids clean out of his backside. Forgive me Rebecca.”

   • 1989, William Outhwaite, “Philosophy and Social Science: Towards Reconciliation?”, in The Polish Sociological Bulletin, number 87/88, Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne, page 49:

     [... I]n general, there has been insufficient realization of the intempestivity of much theoretical debate within the discipline.

   • 2001, Heidrun Friese, The Moment: Time and Rupture in Modern Thought, Liverpool University Press, →ISBN, page 18:

     Any talk about the moment suggests that it really is the right moment to talk about the right moment, that its time has come — and explicit claims to untimeliness or intempestivity are, one might suspect, no more than a further twist of this structure.

   • 2002, Odorico Monteiro de Andrade, Management of the Brazilian Health System, CONASEMS, →ISBN, page 150:

     d) Gradualism. The system should avoid certain inherent distortions to the generated processes of centralized structure, such as ritualism, intempestivity, bureaucracy, imposition of norms, etc.

   • 2008, David Wills, Dorsality: Thinking Back Through Technology and Politics, University of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 213:

     Nietzsche seems an obvious guide here. No philosopher in the tradition presents himself as more contrarian, indeed polemical; no one abandons himself more to the perils of what would normally pass for contradiction and illogicality, intemperance and intempestivity or untimeliness; no one uses declamation so consistently as a strategy against platitude, value as a weapon against morality, irony and sarcasm in the service of rhetorical demystification, interpretation, and affirmation.

Synonyms

• unseasonableness; see also Thesaurus:untimeliness

Antonyms

• tempestivity

Related terms

• intempestive
• intempestively
• intempestivous

Translations

unseasonability; untimeliness

• Catalan: intempestivitat
• Dutch: intempestiviteit
• Finnish: anakronistisuus (fi)
• French: intempestivité (fr)
• Hungarian: időszerűtlenség (hu)
• Mandarin: 不合時宜／不合时宜 (zh) (bùhéshíyí)
• Russian: несвоевременность (ru) f (nesvojevremennostʹ)
• Spanish: intempestividad
• Turkish: zamansızlık (tr)
• Welsh: annhymmoreiddrwydd, annhymmoroldeb, anmhrydlonrwydd

References

• “†intempeˈstivity” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]