incommensurable

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The Word of the Day for July 7 is:

incommensurable   \in-kuh-MEN-suh-ruh-bul\   adjective
     : not commensurable;  broadly : lacking a basis of 
comparison in respect to a quality normally subject to comparison

Example sentence:
     "Our anxieties for you and Margaret and my anxieties for 
the success of my book ... are two so incommensurable things 
that they ought not of right to be brought together in one 
letter." (Robert Frost, _Letters_)

Did you know? 
     "Commensurable" means "having a common measure" 
or "corresponding in size, extent, amount, or degree." Its 
antonym "incommensurable" generally refers to things that are 
unlike and incompatible, sharing no common ground (as 
in "incommensurable theories"), or to things that are very 
disproportionate, often to the point of defying comparison 
("incommensurable crimes"). Both words entered English in the 
1500s and were originally used (as they still can be) for 
numbers that have or don't have a common divisor. They came to 
English by way of Middle French and Late Latin, ultimately 
deriving from Latin "mensura," meaning "measure." "Mensura" is 
also an ancestor of "commensurate" (meaning "coextensive" 
or "proportionate") and "incommensurate" ("disproportionate" 
or "insufficient"), which overlap in meaning 
with "commensurable" and "incommensurable" but are not exact 
synonyms.