unintelligible
/ˌʌnɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒɪbəl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.82 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
6
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Not intelligible; unable to be understood.
Example Sentences
- "And indeed, my lord, there are so many passages in your writing in this controversy with me, which for their construction, as well as otherwise, are so unintelligible to me, that if I should be so unmannerly as to measure your understanding by mine, I should not know what to think of them."
- "They have ſwallowed and digeſted all the Fathers, the Codes, Provincials, Decretals, Pandects, Councils, Canons ; are Maſters of all the Schoolmen, not to fill their Heads and ſtuff their Writings with Quiddities and Quoddities, and far-fetched unintelligible Diſtinctions, but to be able to reaſon cloſely, to argue ſolidly, to rebuke, to confute, to reply, to rejoind, to ſyllogize, to criticize, to apologize, to advertize, to ſermonize, to decypherize, to――"
- "The curious feature of the art was that "horse-whisperers" actually talked to the animal, usually from mouth to ear, in an unintelligible tongue; which, however, the horses appeared to understand."
- "Unintelligible announcements on station loudspeakers are both irritating and confusing."
- "Lately, a study was made of oracle-bone inscriptions excavated in 1899 in the T'ang-yin county, 湯陰縣, of Honan Province and amounting to several thousand pieces, having unintelligible inscriptions whose dates nobody could determine."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Germanic *un- Proto-West Germanic *un- Old English un- Middle English un- English un- English intelligible English unintelligible From un- + intelligible.
Inflected Forms
more unintelligible (comparative)
most unintelligible (superlative)