What does concordance mean?
Concordance has two related meanings: its primary sense is an alphabetical index of all the words used in a particular text or body of writing, each entry listing where the word appears along with enough surrounding context to be useful. Such indexes are indispensable tools in biblical scholarship, literary study, and linguistics, allowing researchers to trace patterns in an author's vocabulary without rereading everything. A secondary sense denotes agreement or harmony between people, ideas, or things, as when independent findings are said to be in concordance. The word derives from Latin roots meaning hearts together, which explains its association with accord. Formal in register, concordance is most at home in academic prose, though the phrase in concordance with occasionally appears in legal and official writing as a slightly more elevated way of saying according to.
An alphabetical index of the words in a text, especially the Bible or the works of a major author, giving each citation with its context.
"She consulted a concordance to find every verse containing the word mercy."
In this sense the plural is straightforwardly concordances.
Agreement or harmony between persons, ideas, or things.
"The survey results showed remarkable concordance across all age groups."
This sense frequently appears in the fixed phrase 'in concordance with', which overlaps in meaning with 'in accordance with'.
Standard pluralization applies; used mainly when referring to multiple indexes for different works or authors.
"The library holds concordances to Chaucer, Milton, and the Bible."
Before computers, compiling a single biblical concordance could take decades — one monk famously spent his whole life indexing every word of the Bible by hand.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of concordance
Concordance comes from the Latin verb concordare, meaning to agree, built on the noun concordia (agreement, harmony), which combines com- (together) and cor/cordis (heart). The word entered English via Old French in the late Middle Ages, originally referring specifically to scriptural indexes such as the great medieval concordances to the Bible. Its cognates include concord, concordant, concur, and cordial, all descending from the same Latin heart-root.
Related word forms
How concordance is actually used
The word is formal and largely academic; outside scholarly contexts it most often appears in the phrase 'in concordance with'. The indexing sense is dominant in literary, linguistic, and biblical studies.
Easily confused with concordance
'Accordance' means conformity or compliance (as in 'in accordance with rules'), while 'concordance' primarily means a word index for a text or general agreement between things.
'Concord' refers to agreement or harmony itself, whereas 'concordance' is chiefly an alphabetical word index of a text and only secondarily a state of agreement.