inscrutable
/ˌɪnˈskɹuːtəbl̩/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.56 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Difficult or impossible to comprehend, fathom, or interpret.
noun
One who or that which is inscrutable; a person, etc. that cannot be comprehended.
Example Sentences
- "His inscrutable theories would years later become the foundation of a whole new science."
- "The pale, inscrutable determinateness, and flinchless intrepidity of Pierre, now began to domineer upon them; for any social unusualness or greatness is sometimes most impressive in the retrospect."
- "It was unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable."
- "She called my vanity license plate inscrutable! 'ICU81MI'? Hilarious!"
- "The writer Juan Rulfo, whose 1955 novel, “Pedro Páramo,” still stands as the central monument of modern Mexican literature, grew up in Jalisco and vividly depicted its arid, sun-blasted landscapes in his writing, while the architect Luis Barragán, who moved from Guadalajara to Mexico City in the 1930s, carried with him an appreciation for his home state’s cloisters, haciendas and humble country buildings, which he translated in his own work as austere, inscrutable volumes of stucco."
Etymology
Borrowed into late Middle English from Late Latin īnscrūtābilis, from in- (“not”) + scrūtō (“to examine”), corresponding to in- + scrutable