unspeakable
unspeakable adjective: incapable of being spoken or uttered.
Adjective
unspeakable (comparative more unspeakable, superlative most unspeakable)
- Incapable of being spoken or uttered.
- The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows.1855-1882, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, book xv
- Synonyms:
- unutterable, ineffable, inexpressible
- Impossible to speak about.
- It is true that during the first week hardly a day passed that Erskine did not address himself to Watt, on the subject of Watt's duties. 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
- Unfit or not permitted to be spoken or described.
- The miser will remember his hoard of gold, the robber his ill-gotten wealth, the angry and revengeful and merciless murderers their deeds of blood and violence in which they revelled, the impure and adulterous the unspeakable and filthy pleasures in which they delighted.1916, James Joyce, chapter III, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 142
- Synonyms:
- unutterable, undiscussable
- Extremely bad or objectionable.
- an unspeakable fool
- an unspeakable play
- That 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
Noun
unspeakable (plural unspeakables)
- Something that cannot or must not be spoken about.
- Near-synonym: unthinkable
- 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
- Synonyms:
- unthinkable
unspeakable meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
unspeakable in Hindi
- unspeakable
- अकथ्य akathya, अकथनीय akathnīya, अकथ akath
unspeakable in Tamil
- சொல்ல முடியாதது, சொல்ல முடியாதவை, சொல்ல இயலாதது
unspeakable in Urdu
- ان کہی, بہت برا, ہولناک
unspeakable in Bengali
- অকথনীয়
More languagesFewer languages
- unspeakable in Telugu
- చెప్పరాని cepparāni
- unspeakable in Malayalam
- പറയാവതല്ലാത്ത, ഉദ്ധരിച്ചുകൂടാത്ത, അപ്രസക്തമായ
- unspeakable in Kannada
- ಹೇಳಲಾಗದ, ಮಾತಿಗೆ ಮೀರಿದ, ಬೆರಗಾಗಿಸುವ, ತುಂಬಾ ಕೆಟ್ಟ
- unspeakable in Gujarati
- અકથનીય
- unspeakable in Odia
- ଅଲେଖା alekhā
- unspeakable in Nepali
- अकथनीय
Examples of unspeakable in a sentence
- Farewell the unspeakable pleasures of ouretic and outlandish, outsoar and oxfordian; forgive my oxyphonia.
- For having the unspeakable nerve to reveal all about Mrs Bottomley.
- His luteous face, scrobiculate by some unspeakable disease, was further disfigured by an anoopsia.
Synonyms of unspeakable
Forms of unspeakable
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more unspeakable |
| superlative | most unspeakable |
| Noun | |
| plural | unspeakables |
Origin of unspeakable
From Middle English unspekable, equivalent to un- + speakable.
Words formed from unspeakable
Questions about unspeakable
- What does unspeakable mean?
- Unspeakable means incapable of being spoken or uttered.
- What is unspeakable in Hindi?
- Unspeakable in Hindi is अकथ्य (akathya), अकथनीय (akathnīya), अकथ (akath). See Unspeakable meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is unspeakable?
- Unspeakable can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near unspeakable in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unspeakable (page history and authors); अकथ (Hindi) (page history and authors); unspeakable (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); unspeakable (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); unspeakable (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); unspeakable (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); unspeakable (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); unspeakable (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ଅଲେଖା (Odia) (page history and authors); unspeakable (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-unspeakable.ogg.
Cite this entry: “unspeakable.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unspeakable. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.