Word.ws English Dictionary

unparaphrasable

unparaphrasable adjective: impossible to paraphrase.

Adjective

unparaphrasable (not comparable)

  1. Impossible to paraphrase
    • Movement like this suggests images and meanings, yet refuses to dictate--it is movement with unspecified or unparaphrasable content, but content nonetheless[…].1988 February 12, Cerinda Survant, “Simple Magic”, in Chicago Reader
    • The language of a poem is not a vehicle for conveying a thought that is independently expressible; it conveys a thought that is encapsulated in the vehicle. Poems create hyperintensional contexts, with content that is unparaphrasable,[…]2015 May 14, John Gibson, The Philosophy of Poetry, OUP Oxford, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 31

Origin of unparaphrasable

From un- + paraphrase + -able.

Questions about unparaphrasable

What does unparaphrasable mean?
Unparaphrasable means impossible to paraphrase.
What part of speech is unparaphrasable?
Unparaphrasable is an adjective.

Words near unparaphrasable in the dictionary

  1. unparameterized
  2. unparametric
  3. unparametrised
  4. unparametrized
  5. unparanoid
  6. unparaphrasable
  7. unparaphrased
  8. unparasitic
  9. unparasitical
  10. unparasitised
  11. unparasitized

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unparaphrasable (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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