UNUTTERABLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unutterable mean? 

• UNUTTERABLE (adjective)
  The adjective UNUTTERABLE has 3 senses:

1. too sacred to be uttered

2. defying expression or description

3. very difficult to pronounce correctly

  Familiarity information: UNUTTERABLE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNUTTERABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Too sacred to be uttered

Synonyms:

ineffable; unnameable; unspeakable; unutterable

Context example:

the ineffable name of the Deity

Similar:

sacred (concerned with religion or religious purposes)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Defying expression or description

Synonyms:

indefinable; indescribable; ineffable; unspeakable; untellable; unutterable

Context example:

a thing of untellable splendor

Similar:

inexpressible; unexpressible (defying expression)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Very difficult to pronounce correctly

Synonyms:

unpronounceable; unutterable

Context example:

unutterable consonant clusters

Similar:

incommunicative; uncommunicative (not inclined to talk or give information or express opinions)

 Context examples 

“Ye-yes,” I said, “he was well taken care of. I mean he had not the unutterable happiness that I had in being so near you.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Depart to your home and commence your labours; I shall watch their progress with unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are ready I shall appear.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

What unutterable pathos was in his voice!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As we passed it Holmes, to my unutterable astonishment, leaned over in front of me and deliberately knocked the whole thing over.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The whole scene was an unutterable mixture of comedy and pathos.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I came upon Kelly crouching to the lee of the forecastle scuttle, his head on his knees, his arms about his head, in an attitude of unutterable despondency.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It advertised his callowness—a callowness sheer and unutterable.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

To some of the best-looking of these good people Henrietta was consigned, for, though partially revived, she was quite helpless; and in this manner, Anne walking by her side, and Charles attending to his wife, they set forward, treading back with feelings unutterable, the ground, which so lately, so very lately, and so light of heart, they had passed along.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

A very short visit to Mrs. Allen, in which Henry talked at random, without sense or connection, and Catherine, rapt in the contemplation of her own unutterable happiness, scarcely opened her lips, dismissed them to the ecstasies of another tete-a-tete; and before it was suffered to close, she was enabled to judge how far he was sanctioned by parental authority in his present application.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I thanked God—experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy—and slept.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)