Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable.
- adjective Not to be uttered; taboo.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun plural Trousers.
- noun One who is not to be named; one who is too high in his profession or in the fashionable world to be named with others.
- Incapable of being expressed in words; unspeakable; unutterable; inexpressible: as, the ineffable joys of heaven; ineffable disgust.
- That must not be spoken: as, the ineffable name. See
Jehovah .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Incapable of being expressed in words; unspeakable; unutterable; indescribable.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Beyond
expression inwords ;unspeakable . - adjective
Forbidden to beuttered ;taboo .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective too sacred to be uttered
- adjective defying expression or description
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word ineffable.
Examples
-
It is a fond conceit of the superstitious Jews that his blasphemy was in pronouncing the name of Jehovah, which they call ineffable: he that made himself known by that name never forbade the calling of him by that name.
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume I (Genesis to Deuteronomy) 1721
-
Something about the plastic face, a face frozen in an expression of ineffable sadness.
THE FORBIDDEN GAME L.J. SMITH 2010
-
Something about the plastic face, a face frozen in an expression of ineffable sadness.
THE FORBIDDEN GAME L.J. SMITH 2010
-
You may give them all they need of food and drink and make the conditions of their existence as favorable as possible, and they may grow and bloom, but there is a certain ineffable something that will be missing if you do not love them, a delicate glory too spiritual to be caught and put into words.
An Island Garden 1894
-
"Weep then, my word ineffable!" cried Malcolm, and laid himself again at her feet, kissed them, and was silent.
The Marquis of Lossie George MacDonald 1864
-
I stood upon the gulf which girds my dwelling: in one hand, I held my sacred talisman, that bears the name ineffable; in the other, the mystic record of our holy race.
Alroy The Prince Of The Captivity Benjamin Disraeli 1842
-
The word ineffable, is important here, Those that practice the art of negative theology, whether within the Abrahamic tradition or not, will always ascribe God as being unknowable, yet paradoxically knowable through this form of theology, though of course not at the anthropomorphic level.
-
Sometimes he introduces himself by the same method to the imagination; and sometimes he addresses the mind in a manner ineffable, which is called Inspiration.
The Works of James Arminius, Vol. 1 1560-1609 1956
-
This word, when thus pronounced, is called the ineffable word, which cannot be altered as other words are, and the degrees which you have received, are called, on this account, INEFFABLE DEGREES.
The Mysteries of Free Masonry Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge William Morgan
-
She recalled the ineffable scenes of the passion, the burial and the resurrection.
Balthasar and Other Works - 1909 Anatole France 1884
seanahan commented on the word ineffable
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. - Dirk Gently
February 7, 2007
knitandpurl commented on the word ineffable
"And this impression would continue to envelop in its liquidity, its ceaseless overlapping, the motifs which from time to time emerge, barely discernible, to plunge again and disappear and drown, recognised only by the particular kind of pleasure which they instil, impossible to describe, to recollect, to name, ineffable—did not our memory, like a labourer who toils at the laying down of firm foundations beneath the tumult of the waves, by fashioning for us facsimiles of those fugitive phrases, enable us to compare and to contrast them with those that follow."
-- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, p 228 of the Vintage International paperback edition
January 13, 2008
sakhalinskii commented on the word ineffable
Something that it is impossible to apply the f word to.
July 31, 2008
sionnach commented on the word ineffable
determinedly chaste
(Lewis M Gediman : Semantricks)
January 8, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ineffable
See also unfuck, I guess... ^^
July 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ineffable
See also the OCSJTS tag.
July 12, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word ineffable
"I rang for Françoise to ask her to buy me a guidebook and a timetable, as I had done as a boy when already I wanted to prepare in advance a journey to Venice, the fulfilment of a desire as violent as that which I felt at this moment. I forgot that in the meantime, there was a desire which I had attained without any satisfaction—the desire for Balbec—and that Venice, being also a visible phenomenon, was probably no more able than Balbec to fulfil an ineffable dream, that of the Gothic age made actual by a springtime sea, that now teased my mind from moment to moment with an enchanted, caressing, elusive, mysterious, confused image."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 558 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010