Word.ws English Dictionary

unfathom

unfathom verb: to come to comprehend; demystify.

Verb

unfathom (third-person singular simple present unfathoms, present participle unfathoming, simple past and past participle unfathomed)

  1. (transitive) to come to comprehend; demystify.
    • […] if the anatomists and physicians find it beyond their penetration to unfathom the mysterious depths in the texture, generation, growth, and operations, of the human body; […]1823, M. Aikin, David Hughson, Memoirs of Religious Impostors from the Seventh to the Nineteenth Century
    • De Vortimer started up, and drawing his sword “By heavens,” said he, “tell me which of you have done this, or I will tear the secret from your hearts! This is some base plot, which I will unfathom ere you leave the chamber.”1845, Love and Crime; or the Mystery of the Convent, page 66
    Synonyms:
    fathom, unravel

Examples of unfathom in a sentence

  • Happy should be the man able to unfathom its many mysteries.1891, Richard Woods, A Practical Guide to Successful Pigeon Culture, page 41:
  • The King smells danger and will ship Hamlet off to England; Polonius wants to try one last time to unfathom the prince.1992, Vincent Crapanzano, Hermes' Dilemma and Hamlet's Desire:
  • A voiceover at our end warned that we might find it 'a bit of a mystery to unfathom what's going on'.2017, Clive James, Clive James On Television:

Synonyms of unfathom

Forms of unfathom

third-person singular presentunfathoms
present participleunfathoming
past participleunfathomed
pastunfathomed

Origin of unfathom

From un- + fathom, possibly created by analogy with untangle, unravel, etc.

Questions about unfathom

What does unfathom mean?
Unfathom means to come to comprehend; demystify.
How do you use unfathom in a sentence?
Happy should be the man able to unfathom its many mysteries.
What part of speech is unfathom?
Unfathom is a verb.
What is the past tense of unfathom?
The past tense of unfathom is unfathomed.

Words near unfathom in the dictionary

  1. unfathering
  2. unfatherlike
  3. unfatherliness
  4. unfatherly
  5. unfathers
  6. unfathom
  7. unfathomability
  8. unfathomable
  9. unfathomableness
  10. unfathomably
  11. unfathomed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unfathom (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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Cite this entry: “unfathom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unfathom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.