ineffable
Etymology
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Etymology
From Middle French ineffable (modern French ineffable), from Latin ineffābilis, from in- + effor + -bilis.
Pronunciation Adjectiveineffable (not comparable)
- Beyond expression in words; unspeakable. [from 1450]
- Synonyms: indescribable, inexpressible, unspeakable, Thesaurus:indescribable, Thesaurus:incomprehensible
- Antonyms: effable
- 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 39, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC ↗:
- Stroeve was trying to express a feeling which he had never known before, and he did not know how to put it into common terms. He was like the mystic seeking to describe the ineffable.
- 1990, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Good Omens:
- God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
- Forbidden to be uttered; taboo.
- Synonyms: taboo, unspeakable, unutterable
- French: ineffable, innommable
- German: unaussprechlich
- Portuguese: inefável, indescritível
- Russian: невырази́мый
- Spanish: inefable
- French: tabou, inexprimable, sacré
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002