Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Difficult or impossible to understand; incomprehensible.
  • adjective Difficult or impossible to measure.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Incapable of being fathomed or sounded; too deep to be measured; hence, not capable of being sounded by thought or comprehended.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective impossible to fathom or understand; incomprehensible
  • adjective difficult to penetrate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of depth; not capable of being sounded or measured
  • adjective resembling an abyss in depth; so deep as to be unmeasurable
  • adjective impossible to come to understand

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

un- +‎ fathomable

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Examples

  • When he looked up, his wife was staring down at him, her expression unfathomable in the darkness.

    Family Blessings Fern Michaels 2004

  • When he looked up, his wife was staring down at him, her expression unfathomable in the darkness.

    Family Blessings Fern Michaels 2004

  • When he looked up, his wife was staring down at him, her expression unfathomable in the darkness.

    Family Blessings Fern Michaels 2004

  • He just looked at her, his expression unfathomable.

    Life Support Tess Gerritsen 1997

  • Ferris had never ceased to wonder at what he called the unfathomable innocence of his wife, and he liked to go over all the points of their former life in Venice, and bring home to himself the utter simplicity of her girlish ideas, motives, and designs, which both confounded and delighted him.

    A Foregone Conclusion William Dean Howells 1878

  • But these latest outrages — arrogant failed business executives raking in unfathomable bonuses from the taxpayers — have an "enough is enough" quality to them.

    The outrage quotient rises 2009

  • It's going to take a while to go through all of the documents, and certainly there will be some embarrassing, mystifying and and just plain unfathomable information gleaned from them.

    The Dump 2007

  • Equally unfathomable is the fact that Dave should come in fourth in the "Arena Magazine Poll".

    Waiting For Guido ... Newmania 2007

  •  His expression unfathomable, he continued to watch, and then turned abruptly, his progress across the courtyard fluttering the doves into noisy protest.

    Falcon's Prey Jordan, Penny 1997

  • Because I use it a lot whether you do or not — all the way down from my cabin to this Palace Of Authority, where you do not even have decent coffee, which I find puzzling or a better word unfathomable!

    Self-Destruction, Vol. 1 James Greer 2011

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