ineffable
adjUK /ɪˈnɛf.ə.bəl/ · US /ˌɪnˈɛf.ə.bəl/
Etymology Borrowed from Middle French ineffable, a learned borrowing from Latin ineffābilis, from in- (“not”) + effābilis (“utterable”).
1
Beyond expression in words; unspeakable.
- Devotion bids aspire to nobler things, to boundless love, and joys ineffable: and such her expectation from kind Heav'n.1750, “Theodora”, Thomas Morell (lyrics), George Frideric Handel (music):
- Stroeve was trying to express a feeling which he had never known before, and he did not know how to put it into common terms. He was like the mystic seeking to describe the ineffable.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 39, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:
3 more examples
- They, and many others, are one with the trains that ran them, part of that ineffable atmosphere of Scotland's railways.1958 July 23, J. P. Wilson, “Scottish Soliloquy”, in Railway Magazine, page 495:
- God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.1990, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Good Omens:
- As Alan Watts (1961) wrote, it involves trying to speak the unspeakable, scrute the inscrutable and eff the ineffable.2012, Gay Watson, Stephen Batchelor, Guy Claxton, The Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, science, and our day-to-day lives:
2
Forbidden to be uttered; taboo.
- Related terms
- effability, effable, ineffability, ineffableness, ineffably
- Coordinate terms
- innumerable, innumerous, unnumerable, incalculable