incompressible

adjective

in·​com·​press·​ible ˌin-kəm-ˈpre-sə-bəl How to pronounce incompressible (audio)
: incapable of or resistant to compression

Examples of incompressible in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Perhaps the oldest and most prominent of these equations, formulated by Leonhard Euler more than 250 years ago, describe the flow of an ideal, incompressible fluid: a fluid with no viscosity, or internal friction, that cannot be forced into a smaller volume. Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 16 Nov. 2022 Because the fluid is incompressible, the movement of the larger cylinder must match that of the smaller one. Wes Siler, Outside Online, 24 Aug. 2022 Most hydraulic equipment uses some sort of incompressible fluid to help create optimal force. Stephanie Toone, ajc, 23 Feb. 2021 Some of my own real-world testing demonstrated a five-percent performance hit when using inline LZ4 compression on completely incompressible data but a 27-percent performance win on a Windows Server ISO—and that was on very fast SSD storage. Jim Salter, Ars Technica, 13 Jan. 2020 The Web browsing workload—16 parallel downloads of a 128KB incompressible file, rate-limited to 1Mbps by sleeping in between operations as necessary—is the key to measuring network performance. Jim Salter, Ars Technica, 12 June 2018 Bumps in the road were dampened by the incompressible fluid squeezing the compressible gas in the spheres. The Economist, 15 Mar. 2018 Initially, the moving air, which behaves as an incompressible flow in the open-ended AirDancer, creates enough pressure to inflate the tube. Eric Tingwall, Car and Driver, 17 Oct. 2017

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'incompressible.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1736, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of incompressible was circa 1736

Dictionary Entries Near incompressible

Cite this Entry

“Incompressible.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incompressible. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

incompressible

adjective
in·​com·​press·​ible ˌin-kəm-ˈpres-ə-bəl How to pronounce incompressible (audio)
: impossible or difficult to compress
incompressibility
-ˌpres-ə-ˈbil-ət-ē
noun
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