Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Not to be named or identified.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective That cannot, or should not, be
named
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective too sacred to be uttered
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Odorants classified as unnameable were rated as significantly more difficult to name than odors classified as nameable.
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Christina Zelano et al. 2009
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Whereupon this foreigner, who was clueless and careless enough to mention the occult, was showered with stories of varying levels of tragedy illustrating the cataclysmic powers of the 'unnameable', whose name still inspired fear.
signandsight.com 2010
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Odorants classified as unnameable and nameable were rated as equally intense (t (9) = 0.76, p
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Christina Zelano et al. 2009
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Claustrophobia replaces openness as you experience the unnameable on a colossal scale.
The Facelessness of Mass Destruction Willard Spiegelman 2011
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The usual rap on Mr. Romney is that he's robotic, but the real reason he can't gain traction with voters is that they suspect he's concealing some unnameable private doubt.
The GOP Deserves to Lose Bret Stephens 2012
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We notice, in a pile of unnameable forms, suggestively titled "Residue," the shoe soles that will return again and again in Guston's later paintings, as well as hints of stubbed-out cigarette butts.
An Anxious Modern Eyes the Eternal City Karen Wilkin 2011
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Detailed scenarios display fragments of earth and home destroyed by some unnameable horror.
Tracey Harnish: Devastation of the American Dream Tracey Harnish 2011
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Netherland recognizes the tenuous nature of a self, that "fine white thread running, through years and years," and Hans flirts with the possibility that language may not precisely describe the world ( "I was assaulted by the notion, arriving in the form of a terrifying stroke of consciousness, that substance — everything of so called concreteness — was indistinct from its unnameable opposite").
Part 2: Netherland, Lyrical Realism, and the flip flops of Zadie Smith 2009
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Detailed scenarios display fragments of earth and home destroyed by some unnameable horror.
Tracey Harnish: Devastation of the American Dream Tracey Harnish 2011
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Detailed scenarios display fragments of earth and home destroyed by some unnameable horror.
Tracey Harnish: Devastation of the American Dream Tracey Harnish 2011
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