Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use illegible in a sentence

12 example sentences · adjective

Illegible means not clear enough to be read; unreadable; not legible or decipherable. Example: “The signature was illegible, but the printed name beneath it clearly said "William Wilson."”

More sentences with illegible

  • The signature was illegible, but the printed name beneath it clearly said "William Wilson."From the entry printed
  • When you write in cursive, it's illegible.From the entry in
  • I finally managed to decode the nearly illegible doctor's prescription.From the entry decode
  • The teacher squinted irritably at my illegible scrawlings.From the entry scrawling
  • The legibility of this text is questionable: half the people asked said it was almost illegible, but the other half said it was easy to read.From the entry legibility
  • This is yet another practice of cislation, or the translating of seemingly illegible (i.e., not understandable) genders for cis recognition.2019 June 4, T.J. Jourian and Z Nicolazzo, "Not Another Gender Binary: A Call For Complexity Over Cis-Readability: Why a nonbinary/binary…. From the entry cislation
  • He studied a tapestry on one wall of a noli me tangere wrought by a craftsman whose signature was illegible.2008, Allen Russo, chapter 1, in Rufus of Rhodes: Volume II: Marching with the Legions, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 13. From the entry noli me tangere
  • The forms became almost illegible after multiple photocopyings.1995, Sarah J. Mahler, American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins, page 168. From the entry photocopying
  • Many illegible letters is the sign of disorder, and the illegibility of Greeley's cacography has furnished numberless anecdotes.1904, John Rexford, What Handwriting Indicates, pages 90–91. From the entry cacography
  • I don't even recognize the handwriting – kind of a scrawled, almost illegible cacography with the letters slanting haphazardly in all directions.2010, Martin L. Buxbaum, Negotiations with the Sniper: Book One, page 63. From the entry cacography
  • "I have no idea," the young woman said, checking over the scraggly illegible signature the mystery woman had left her in her autograph book.2001 September 7, Christopher John Farley, “At the MTV Awards: Redheads and Circuses”, in Time. From the entry scraggly
  • At times the image is so chiaroscuro as to be nearly illegible, such that one can only imagine the discussions between Lang and the Technicolor advisors.2007, Gerd Gemünden, Mary R. Desjardins, Dietrich Icon, page 265. From the entry chiaroscuro

Meaning of illegible

  1. adjective Not clear enough to be read; unreadable; not legible or decipherable.

Full definition of illegible

Questions about illegible in a sentence

How do you use illegible in a sentence?
Illegible is used as an adjective. For example: “The signature was illegible, but the printed name beneath it clearly said "William Wilson."”
What is a short sentence with illegible?
“When you write in cursive, it's illegible.”
What does illegible mean?
Illegible means not clear enough to be read; unreadable; not legible or decipherable.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: illegible (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use illegible in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/illegible. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.