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Glite Dictionary
unpaintable

unpaintable

6.8
A thing artists cannot paint well on a canvas
  • adjective
  • /ʌnˈpeɪntəbl/
translation icon : no pintable
  • He felt that the emotions surrounding the event were unpaintable and could only be felt, not depicted.

Examples

  • The artist struggled to capture the essence of the unpaintable scenery before her.

  • "Artists from the Old World," she notes, "said our West was crude, unpaintable": PREFORMATTED TABLE

    Academic text (2004)

  • It seemed that the tree was somehow facing down the road and that the suffused gray mist gave off a radiance, as if this scene were only the prelude to something beyond it, that down that road something unpainted and unpaintable lay in wait.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • Many claimed that the beauty of the wild landscape was simply unpaintable.

Synonyms

unpicturable
vsunpaintable
9.2

Impossible to show in a picture

is not suitable for artistic depiction on canvas though may be imaginable

Antonyms

paintable
1 1.8

A surface you can put color on with a brush or spray

How Paintable

paintable
1 1.8
unpaintable
6.8

Surface Forms

unpaintable positive

Morphology

unpaintable = paintable (transparent) = un + paint + able

The prefix 'un-' clearly negates the meaning of 'paintable', indicating something that cannot be painted.

Etymology

The word unpaintable is built from un- ('not'), the familiar word paint, and -able ('able to be'). So it simply means 'not able to be painted', which helps you remember we use it for scenes, ideas, or feelings that seem impossible to show with a brush or on canvas.