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inconsolable

adjectiveC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — console sits at #5,580neutral

Inconsolable means too heartbroken for any comfort to reach. Nothing anybody says or does will help.

It describes grief above all, and an inconsolable child or an inconsolable widow is beyond the reach of the usual kindnesses, which is what makes the word so bleak. It is a temporary state by definition, since nobody is inconsolable for ever, though it does not feel that way at the time. Disconsolate is milder and describes disappointment rather than grief.

Definitions of inconsolable

  1. 1adjectiveinconsolableUnable to be comforted.C2

    “The children were inconsolable for weeks.”

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    inconsolabilis

  2. Middle French

    inconsolable

  3. English, today

    inconsolable

Middle French inconsolable, from Latin inconsolabilis; by surface analysis, in- + consolable, or, by surface analysis, in- + console + -able.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 23 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

inconsolable in the wild

  • Catocala insolabilis, the inconsolable underwing, is a moth of the family Erebidae.

    Catocala insolabilis

  • Orfeo dolente (Orpheus inconsolable) is an opera by Domenico Belli to a libretto by Gabriello Chiabrera, an example of "representative style" of the early Baroque era.

    Orfeo dolente

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • console
  • consolation