different between unspeakable vs ineffable

English

Etymology

From Middle English unspekable, equivalent to un- +? speakable.

Pronunciation

Adjective

unspeakable (comparative more unspeakable, superlative most unspeakable)

1. Incapable of being spoken or uttered

   Synonyms: unutterable, ineffable, inexpressible

   • 1855-1882, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, book xv,

     The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows.

2. Unfit or not permitted to be spoken or described.
   • 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, ch. 3,

     The miser will remember his hoard of gold, the robber his ill-gotten wealth, the angry and revengeful and merciless murderers their deeds of blood and violence in which they revelled, the impure and adulterous the unspeakable and filthy pleasures in which they delighted.

3. Extremely bad or objectionable.

   an unspeakable fool

   an unspeakable play

   • 1926, H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider,

     Yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its mouldy, disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even more.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:indescribable

Derived terms

• unspeakably
• unspeakableness

Translations

References

• unspeakable in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “unspeakable” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "unspeakable" in the Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus (Wordsmyth, 2002)
• "unspeakable" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• “unspeakable”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.
• "unspeakable" at Rhymezone (Datamuse, 2006).
• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)

Scots

Etymology

un- +? speak +? -able

Adjective

unspeakable (comparative mair unspeakable, superlative maist unspeakable)

1. unspeakable

English

Etymology

From Middle French ineffable (modern French ineffable), from Latin ineff?bilis, from in- (“not”) +? effor (“utter”) +? -bilis (“-able”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /??n?f.?.b?l/
• (US) IPA^(key): /??n??f.?.b?l/

Adjective

ineffable (not comparable)

1. Beyond expression in words; unspeakable. [from 1450]

   Synonyms: indescribable, inexpressible, unspeakable; see also Thesaurus:indescribable, Thesaurus:incomprehensible

   Antonym: (archaic) effable

   • 1919, W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, chapter 39

     Stroeve was trying to express a feeling which he had never known before, and he did not know how to put it into common terms. He was like the mystic seeking to describe the ineffable.

   • 1990, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

     God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

   • 2012, Gay Watson, Stephen Batchelor, Guy Claxton, The Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, science, and our day-to-day lives

     As Alan Watts (1961) wrote, it involves trying to speak the unspeakable, scrute the inscrutable and eff the ineffable.

2. Forbidden to be uttered; taboo.

   Synonyms: taboo, unspeakable, unutterable

Related terms

• effable
• ineffability
• ineffableness
• ineffably

Coordinate terms

• innumerable
• innumerous
• unnumerable
• incalculable

Translations

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin ineff?bilis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /i.n?.fabl/
• Rhymes: -abl
• Homophone: ineffables

Adjective

ineffable (plural ineffables)

1. ineffable (unable to be expressed in words)
   • 1837 Louis Viardot, L’Ingénieux Hidalgo Don Quichotte de la Manche^{fr.Wikisource}, translation of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Chapter I:

     Il lui parut convenable et nécessaire, aussi bien pour l’éclat de sa gloire que pour le service de son pays, de se faire chevalier errant, de s’en aller par le monde, avec son cheval et ses armes, chercher les aventures, et de pratiquer tout ce qu’il avait lu que pratiquaient les chevaliers errants, redressant toutes sortes de torts, et s’exposant à tant de rencontres, à tant de périls, qu’il acquît, en les surmontant, une éternelle renommée. Il s’imaginait déjà, le pauvre rêveur, voir couronner la valeur de son bras au moins par l’empire de Trébizonde. Ainsi emporté par de si douces pensées et par l’ineffable attrait qu’il y trouvait, il se hâta de mettre son désir en pratique.

     It seemed to him appropriate and necessary, as much for his own glory as for the service of his country, that he should become a knight-errant, and go about the world, with his horse and his weapons, looking for adventures, and practising everything that he had read that knights-errant practised, redressing all sorts of wrongs, and exposing themselves to so many encounters, to so many perils, that he should gain, in surmounting them, eternal fame. He already imagined himself, the poor dreamer, seeing himself crowned at least by the emperor of Trebizond. So carried away was he by such pleasant thoughts and by the ineffable attraction that he found in them, he hurried to put his desire into practice.

   Synonyms: inénarrable, indicible

Further reading

• “ineffable” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Middle French

Adjective

ineffable m or f (plural ineffables)

1. ineffable (unable to be expressed in words)