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incalculability

incalculability

9.9
Something that cannot be measured, predicted, or counted
  • noun
  • /ˌɪnˌkæl.kjʊˈlæb.ɪ.ti/
translation icon : incalculabilidad
  • The incalculability of human behavior makes it challenging for economists to create accurate models.

Examples

  • The cigarette is a motif of waste in terms of labor, health, and temporality that reminds us of filmic experience's incalculability, its unrefined pleasures, and the threat implied in its collective dreams.

    Academic text (2016)
  • It touches ugly chords of prejudice, it raises nationalistic instincts that the West has not had to contend with for many decades, and it introduces an element of incalculability into each country's public life and into the relations of nations with each other.

    Academic text (1994)
  • The incalculability of nature's forces makes it difficult to predict the weather accurately.

  • In mathematics, the incalculability of certain problems leads to new theories and explorations.

Synonyms

immeasurability
vsincalculability
9.7

Being too large or great to know exactly

is broader, adding inability to estimate or predict beyond measurement
imponderability
vsincalculability
  • Formal
9.9

A factor that cannot be measured or predicted

names the broader quality rather than a single unmeasurable factor

Antonyms

The ability to be worked out or measured with numbers

How Measurable

incalculability
9.9

Surface Forms

Morphology

incalculability = incalculable (transparent) = in + calcul + able + ity

The noun meaning is directly and regularly formed from the adjective 'incalculable' with the abstract noun suffix '-ity'.

Etymology

The word incalculability is made from in- meaning 'not' and calculate, which comes from a word for 'count'. Think of a calculator, a device that counts. So incalculability means 'not able to be counted, measured, or predicted', which is why we use it for things we cannot estimate.