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UNUTTERABLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Very difficult to pronounce correctly
Example:
unutterable consonant clusters
Synonyms:
unpronounceable; unutterable
Classified under:
Similar:
incommunicative; uncommunicative (not inclined to talk or give information or express opinions)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Defying expression or description
Example:
a thing of untellable splendor
Synonyms:
indefinable; indescribable; ineffable; unspeakable; untellable; unutterable
Classified under:
Similar:
inexpressible; unexpressible (defying expression)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Too sacred to be uttered
Example:
the ineffable name of the Deity
Synonyms:
ineffable; unnameable; unspeakable; unutterable
Classified under:
Similar:
sacred (concerned with religion or religious purposes)
Context examples:
How often have I seen him, intent upon a match at marbles or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and hardly breathing at the critical times!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
"After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He was silent and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn't true.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
