unrepresentable
1
8.8
- adjective
- /ˌʌnrɛprɪˈzɛntəbl/
- Specialized
:
inrepresentable
- Jaar created this "cemetery of images" because he felt that "the tragedy was unrepresentable." Referring to Kant's theory of the sublime, Jaar asserts that what took place is beyond the power of images and indeed would be in some way sullied by visual representation.
- presenting the unrepresentable
Examples
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Some emotions are so intense that they feel unrepresentable in words.
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The problem of the unrepresentable also surfaces when the objects to be depicted do not exist in three-dimensional space.
Academic text (1995) -
What does it mean to speak of the unrepresentable, or to think of art as showing it?
Academic text (1998) -
Do video games have this element of the unrepresentable?
Blog text (17) -
The partial texts within the novel play off against each other to suggest the unrepresentable whole.
Academic text (1997) -
Take, for example, Lyotard's concept of "presenting the unrepresentable."
Academic text (1998) -
The British, American, and Soviet cameramen who discovered the camps all faced the same problems in showing the unrepresentable.
Academic text (1999) -
The return to the primal scene becomes a return to absence—the unrepresentable.
Academic text (1997) -
Everything, including the unrepresentable—and scenes beyond morality and taboos, there are plenty here.
Blog text (5) -
In more radical terms, what is unrepresentable can never be adequately put in an image because it is nonpictorial, unimaginable, forbidden, or transcendental.
Academic text (1995)
Synonyms
4
6.9
Hard to describe or explain in words
3
7.5
A feeling so strong that you cannot describe it in words
3
6.8
Hard to describe exactly in words
1
7.8
Hard to describe in words
1
7.7
Too hard to describe in words
Impossible to describe exactly
Antonyms
How Representable
- Specialized
- Specialized
1
8.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
unrepresentable = representable (transparent) = un + represent + able
The adjective is formed by adding the productive negative prefix 'un-' to 'representable', yielding the standard 'not able to be represented' meaning.
Etymology
Unrepresentable breaks into un- 'not', re- 'again', and present 'to show'. So it means something that cannot be shown or described in a particular form or system.