Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use unspeakable in a sentence

17 example sentences · adjective, noun

Unspeakable means incapable of being spoken or uttered. Example: “But in the first week Watt's words had not yet begun to fail him, or Watt's world to become unspeakable.”

Examples of unspeakable by meaning

adjectiveImpossible to speak about.

  • But in the first week Watt's words had not yet begun to fail him, or Watt's world to become unspeakable.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC

adjectiveExtremely bad or objectionable.

  • an unspeakable fool
  • an unspeakable play
  • Yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its mouldy, disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even more.1926, H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

adjectiveThat cannot be referenced in source code, due to having no usable name.

  • an instance of an unspeakable type
  • unspeakable field names2008, Trey Nash, Accelerated C# 2008, page 509

nounSomething that cannot or must not be spoken about.

  • The longer we don't speak about the unspeakables, the more harm they do to the relationship.2009, Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, Kate Sweetman, The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead by, page 62

More sentences with unspeakable

  • Farewell the unspeakable pleasures of ouretic and outlandish, outsoar and oxfordian; forgive my oxyphonia.2009, Ellis Sharp, Macdonald Daly, Dead Iraqis: Selected Short Stories of Ellis Sharp, page 166. From the entry oxyphonia
  • For having the unspeakable nerve to reveal all about Mrs Bottomley.1992 July 22, Andrew Moncur, “Diary”, in The Guardian, London, page 21, columns 1–5. From the entry currant bun
  • His luteous face, scrobiculate by some unspeakable disease, was further disfigured by an anoopsia.1958 May 9, Strix [pseudonym], “English Spoken Here”, in The Spectator, volume 200, number 6776, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 585, column 2. From the entry luteous
  • Arvik, are interpreted as covering unspeakable iniquities that only exist in the minds of the critics.1916, Henry Goddard Leach, editor, The American-Scandinavian Review, volume 4, New York, N.Y.: The American-Scandinavian Foundation…. From the entry obtuse
  • Idris, the first High King, had silvery eyes in a face lined with years of bright laughter and unspeakable sorrow.2012, Holly Taylor, Dreamer's Cycle Series. From the entry high king
  • She pulls back, half-resisting, and for one moment it seems he intends to lay her little fingers upon his unspeakable codpiece.2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate, published 2010, page 408. From the entry codpiece
  • His name, infamous now, would have an additional horror, and ever be remembered by posterity in unspeakable loathing, in unsoftening wrath.1906, Zane Grey, The Spirit of the Border. From the entry unsoftening
  • Grodin at his whiniest and Arthur Hiller, the veteran director of films as funny as The In-Laws and as unspeakable as Love Story.1990 August 17, Caryn James, “Review/Film; An Adman, His Filofax And a Thief”, in The New York Times. From the entry whiny
  • The bedroom, dreamroom of the house, becomes awake when we sleep and fills with ancestors, daemons, animals, unspeakable acts, unknown creatures, and other fears not admitted to conscious life.1994, Sardello, Robert J, Facing the World with Soul, HarperPerennial, page 38. From the entry dream room
  • But the dreams came upon him too: gallopings and shouts through a windy sky, wingbeats, cruel beaks and claws, a feeling of loss unspeakable and unbounded.1973, Poul Anderson, Hrolf Kraki's Saga. From the entry galloping

Meaning of unspeakable

  1. adjective Incapable of being spoken or uttered.
  2. adjective Impossible to speak about.
  3. adjective Unfit or not permitted to be spoken or described.

Full definition of unspeakable

Questions about unspeakable in a sentence

How do you use unspeakable in a sentence?
Unspeakable is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “But in the first week Watt's words had not yet begun to fail him, or Watt's world to become unspeakable.”
What is a short sentence with unspeakable?
“an unspeakable fool”
What does unspeakable mean?
Unspeakable means incapable of being spoken or uttered.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unspeakable (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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