unnamable

Examples

• All

• Our help is in You unnamable name, word of all words inside the ear, You to whom all speech is addressed.

  Stanford

• In The Unnamable, for example, two friends sitting on a tombstone discuss the limits of representation: how they might know the unknowable, or name the unnamable.

  Academic text (2010)

• The sexual is unnamable: it is perhaps the unnamable itself.

  Academic text (1998)

• The sexual is unnamable: it is perhaps the unnamable itself.

  Academic text (1998)

• An ellipsis in regard to the body, "such" stands in as the unnamable essence that escapes the physical and the linguistic.

  Academic text (2017)

• He was chilled from the open window, tired too, the unnamable emotion he had been feeling all day welling again.

  Fiction book (1997)

• But even when he least expected it, he would be visited with a new gust of this unnamable generosity of spirit when the world seemed nearly Platonic in its perfection.

  Fiction book (1999)

• She struggled to express her feelings about the loss, which seemed completely unnamable in words.

• The fear of the unknown can often be unnamable, leaving people at a loss for how to articulate their anxieties.

Synonyms

U

unspeakable

vsunnamable

58 7.2

Too terrible to describe in words

focuses on naming impossibility rather than moral or emotional horror

I

indescribable

vsunnamable

21 5.4

So wonderful or strange that words cannot show it

highlights inability to name rather than positive wonder or rarity

I

ineffable

vsunnamable

• Formal

8 9.5

So great that words cannot describe it

stresses inability to name rather than religious greatness or sacredness

I

indefinable

vsunnamable

4 6.9

Hard to describe or explain in words

is about inability to name rather than precise lack of definition

I

inexpressible

vsunnamable

3 7.5

A feeling so strong that you cannot describe it in words

focuses on inability to name or label rather than only express

U

undefinable

vsunnamable

3 6.8

Hard to describe exactly in words

emphasizes naming impossibility rather than precision of definition

U

unnameable

vsunnamable

1 7.8

Hard to describe in words

has identical meaning but uses an alternate spelling form

U

unsayable

vsunnamable

1 8.5

Too hard to put into words

emphasizes inability to name or label rather than just difficulty saying

U

unrepresentable

vsunnamable

• Specialized

1 8.8

Something that a computer system cannot show or describe

is about lacking any name rather than inability to fit a form

U

untellable

vsunnamable

9.9

So great you cannot describe it in words

focuses on being impossible to name rather than only extreme scale

U

unspecifiable

vsunnamable

8.5

Impossible to describe exactly

focuses on naming impossibility rather than technical exactness

Antonyms

N

nameable

1 3.5

You can tell what it is by its name

How Nameable

nameable

1 3.5

unnamable

1 7.7

Surface Forms

Morphology

Etymology