Word.ws English Dictionary

beyond one's ken

beyond one's ken prepositional phrase: beyond one's knowledge or understanding.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Beyond one's knowledge or understanding.
    • Much of what McLuhan wrote and some of what Coupland relates are beyond my ken, but I don’t know about that “hole in heaven” stuff.2011 January 6, David Carr, “Marshall McLuhan: Media Savant”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Origin of beyond one's ken

From ken (“knowledge, understanding”).

Questions about beyond one's ken

What does beyond one's ken mean?
Beyond one's ken means beyond one's knowledge or understanding.
What part of speech is beyond one's ken?
Beyond one's ken is a prepositional phrase.

Words near beyond one's ken in the dictionary

  1. beyond compare
  2. beyond comparison
  3. beyond dispute
  4. beyond measure
  5. beyond one's depth
  6. beyond one's ken
  7. beyond one's pay grade
  8. beyond one's wildest dreams
  9. beyond one's years
  10. beyond question
  11. beyond reason of a doubt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beyond one's ken (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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