unfathomable grief
- noun
- /ʌnˈfæðəməbl ɡriːf/
:
dolor inconmensurable
- She spoke of her unfathomable grief following the loss of her mother, which seemed impossible to alleviate.
Examples
-
The news of her sudden passing filled him with unfathomable grief, leaving him unable to express his feelings.
-
After losing his beloved pet, he was overwhelmed by unfathomable grief that he struggled to cope with.
-
Sandal has left her not only with unfathomable grief, but with a ledger of unpaid accounts and a mortgage to pay.
Fiction book (2002)
Synonyms
443
2.1
Deep sadness after you lose someone or something important
310
2.8
A feeling of great unhappiness and suffering
135
3.9
A very strong physical or mental pain
79
4.8
Strong emotional pain you feel after losing someone or when love fails
76
3.9
A very strong sadness after losing someone you love
13
5.8
A feeling of extreme sadness and shock after a big loss
4
3.7
A very strong feeling of sadness after a great loss
1
6.5
A deep, quiet feeling or look of sadness
A deep feeling of sadness about a loss
Deep sadness after losing someone you love
A feeling of pain too strong to describe in words
How Deep
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward adjective+noun composition: 'unfathomable' (impossible or very difficult to comprehend) modifies 'grief' (intense sorrow), so the combined meaning follows directly from the constituent meanings. This compositional pattern is common across languages and standard in English, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the intended sense.
Etymology
Unfathomable grief comes from the old word fathom, a way to measure how deep water was, so imagine an ocean so deep you cannot find the bottom. So, it describes sadness that is 'so deep it cannot be measured or understood'.