# non sequitur

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/non-sequitur
Updated: 2026-08-03

## Meaning

A conclusion or remark that does not follow from what came before.

## Examples

- We were discussing the budget and he asked about the weather — a total non sequitur.
- The argument opens well and then ends in a non sequitur: nothing in the first three pages supports the recommendation on the fourth.
- The speech was a chain of non sequiturs held together by tone alone, and it worked on the night for exactly that reason — the audience was following the confidence rather than the reasoning.

## Origin

Non sequitur is a complete Latin sentence: it does not follow. Roman writers on rhetoric used it as a technical verdict, marking the place where an argument's conclusion has stopped being supported by its premises — the Latin equivalent of the Greek logical vocabulary they had inherited. English borrowed it in the sixteenth century with that strict meaning intact, and formal logic still uses it that way. Every named fallacy is a species of non sequitur. Ordinary English then loosened it. A non sequitur is now just as often a remark with no visible connection to the conversation it lands in — not a broken argument, just a sentence that arrived from somewhere else.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.