Zusammenhängendes

Zusammenhängendes is the attributive inflected form of the German adjective zusammenhängend, meaning coherent, cohesive, or logically connected. It is used to describe things that hang together in a unified whole, such as a text, an argument, a narrative, or a geographic or mathematical object.

In usage, zusammenhängendes appears after articles or determiners and changes its ending according to number and gender. Examples include: ein zusammenhängendes Textstück (neuter, singular, indefinite), das zusammenhängende Textstück (neuter, singular, definite), zusammenhängende Gedanken (plural, no article or with some determiners), and die zusammenhängenden Kapitel (plural, definite). The endings follow standard German adjective declension rules, with the exact form depending on whether the determiner is definite, indefinite, or absent.

Contexts of use span literature, linguistics, and science. In textual analysis, zusammenhängendes Textwerk or zusammenhängende Erzählung conveys coherence and unity of argument or storyline. In linguistics and rhetoric, the term is often contrasted with unzusammenhängendes or unschlüssiges, which denote lack of coherence. In mathematics and related fields, zusammenhängend is used to describe connected or contiguous structures, such as zusammenhängende Räume in topology or territory, expressing a sense of being one piece rather than disjointed.

Etymology traces zusammenhängend to the prefix zusammen- (together) and hängen (to hang). The combined sense is “hanging together,” i.e., elements that are physically, logically, or sequentially tied to form a coherent whole. Related terms include Zusammenhang (context or coherence), kohärent (coherent in a logical sense), and Zusammengehörigkeit (belonging together).

Overall, zusammenhängendes denotes the quality of unity and coherence across a range of German-language contexts.