unspeakable adj

1 defying expression or description; "indefinable yearnings"; "indescribable beauty"; "ineffable ecstasy"; "inexpressible anguish"; "unspeakable happiness"; "unutterable contempt"; "a thing of untellable splendor" [syn: indefinable, indescribable, ineffable, untellable, unutterable]

2 exceptionally bad or displeasing; "atrocious taste"; "abominable workmanship"; "an awful voice"; "dreadful manners"; "a painful performance"; "terrible handwriting"; "an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room" [syn: atrocious, abominable, awful, dreadful, painful, terrible]

3 too sacred to be uttered; "the ineffable name of the Deity" [syn: ineffable, unnameable, unutterable]

English

Pronunciation

Adjective

1. Incapable of being spoken or uttered; unutterable; ineffable; inexpressible.
   • 1855-1882, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, book xv,

     The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows.

2. Unfit or not permitted to be spoken or described.
   • 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, ch. 3,

     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.

3. Extremely bad or objectionable.

   an unspeakable fool

   an unspeakable play

   • 1926, H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider,

     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.

Derived terms

• unspeakably
• unspeakableness

References

• "unspeakable" in Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2007 Microsoft Corporation.
• "unspeakable" in the Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus © Wordsmyth 2002.
• "unspeakable" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary © Cambridge University Press 2007.
• "unspeakable" in Compact Oxford English Dictionary, © Oxford University Press, 2007.
• "unspeakable" at Rhymezone © 2006 Datamuse.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.

Unspeakable may refer to:

• Unspeakable (Harry Potter), a job in J. K. Rowling's fictional Harry Potter universe.
• Unspeakable (song), a single by Ace of Base
• Acts of the Unspeakable, an album by Autopsy

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