English

Adjective

unspeakable ‎(comparative more unspeakable, superlative most unspeakable)

1. Incapable of being spoken or uttered; unutterable; ineffable; inexpressible.
   • 1855-1882, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, book xv,

     The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows.

2. Unfit or not permitted to be spoken or described.
   • 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, ch. 3,

     The miser will remember his hoard of gold, the robber his ill-gotten wealth, the angry and revengeful and merciless murderers their deeds of blood and violence in which they revelled, the impure and adulterous the unspeakable and filthy pleasures in which they delighted.

3. Extremely bad or objectionable.

   an unspeakable fool

   an unspeakable play

   • 1926, H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider,

     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.

Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:indescribable

Derived terms

• unspeakably
• unspeakableness

Translations

References

• unspeakable in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• “unspeakable” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.
• “unspeakable” in Microsoft's Encarta World English Dictionary, North American Edition (2007)
• "unspeakable" in the Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus (Wordsmyth, 2002)
• "unspeakable" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• “unspeakable” in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• "unspeakable" at Rhymezone (Datamuse, 2006).
• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)

Scots

Etymology

un- +‎ speak +‎ -able

Adjective

unspeakable ‎(comparative mair unspeakable, superlative maist unspeakable)

1. unspeakable