incomprehensibly
- adverb
- /ˌɪnkəmˈprɛhənsəbli/
- The instructions were written incomprehensibly, making it hard for anyone to follow them.
It was the most incomprehensibly, you know, stupid waste of trees ever.
- It was the most incomprehensibly, you know, stupid waste of trees ever.
- There's there's no shortage of of things that are incomprehensibly strange in the biblical library.
Examples
-
Unless we embrace those simplified rules, we’d always be facing problems that are incomprehensibly complex; they help us think that things make sense.
Academic text (1997) -
The video showed a postman shouting incomprehensibly into the wind and rain.
Fiction book (1993) -
The time felt incomprehensibly strange.
Fiction book (2002) -
I can feel the world streaming past me... incomprehensibly as it seems to us at our age.
-
For a man who seemed to live dozens of lives in the space of one, that seemed incomprehensibly slow.
Blog text (20) -
There he lifted a phone, pushed a button, and spoke rapidly and, to Ryan, incomprehensibly.
Fiction book (1991) -
I'd agree that we humans are imperfect, sometimes incomprehensibly so.
Blog text (18) -
Maybe the lives of hyper intelligent aliens will look to us incomprehensibly complicated or boring.
-
Yet when the coalition finally decided to act against them, its approach was impromptu and incomprehensibly chaotic.
Academic text (2004) -
It wasn't just boring and meandering, but often times incomprehensibly contradictory.
Synonyms
In a way that is not clear or logical
In a way that makes it hard to understand
In a way that is very hard to understand
In a way that is so great it cannot be understood or believed
In a way that is very surprising and hard to understand
In a confusing way that makes something hard to understand
In a way that hides what someone feels and is hard to understand
In a way that is hard to understand
In a way that is very confusing and hard to understand
In a way that makes something hard to understand
In a way that is confusing and hard to understand
So unclear that people cannot read or understand it
In a way people cannot read or understand
In a way that makes something hard to understand
Antonyms
How Understandable
Surface Forms
Morphology
incomprehensibly = incomprehensible (semi-transparent) = in + comprehens + ible + ly
Adding '-ly' to the adjective 'incomprehensible' gives the expected adverb meaning in a fully regular way.
Etymology
The word incomprehensibly begins with in- meaning 'not' and the rest comes from comprehend, an old word that meant 'to grasp', as when you 'grasp' an idea. So, incomprehensibly means 'in a way that cannot be understood'.