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unspeakable

adj

Etymology

From Middle English unspekable, equivalent to un- + speakable.

  1. inherited from unspekable

Definitions

  1. Incapable of being spoken or uttered.

    • 1855-1882, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, book xv, The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows.

  2. Impossible to speak about.

  3. Unfit or not permitted to be spoken or described.

  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. Extremely bad or objectionable.

      • an unspeakable fool
      • an unspeakable play
      • Yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its mouldy, disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even more.

    2. That cannot be referenced in source code, due to having no usable name.

      • an instance of an unspeakable type
      • unspeakable field names

    3. Something that cannot or must not be spoken about.

      • Near-synonym: unthinkable
      • The longer we don't speak about the unspeakables, the more harm they do to the relationship.

The neighborhood

Derived

unspeakably, unspeakableness

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for unspeakable. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA