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ineffable

UK/ɪˈnɛf.ə.bəl/US/ˌɪnˈɛf.ə.bəl/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,879 of 15,258neutral

Ineffable means too great or too fine to be put into words. Ineffable beauty, an ineffable sadness, ineffable joy.

It belongs to religious writing and to poetry, where the ineffable is the whole subject. There is a joke in using it at all, since saying something is ineffable is describing it.

Definitions of ineffable

  1. 1adjectiveineffableToo great or too fine to be put into words.C2

    “Standing on the mountain top at sunrise, she felt an ineffable sense of peace.”

ineffable is a quality.

Remember it

In- is not and the rest is to speak, the same not-speaking that makes an infant. What is ineffable cannot be spoken at all.

hooks ontospeak

Where it comes from

  1. Middle French

    ineffable

  2. English, today

    ineffable

Borrowed from Middle French ineffable.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

ineffable in the wild

  • Thus, it is ineffable if and only if it is 2-ineffable.

    Ineffable cardinal

  • The author asserts that previous human inquiries have failed to reach the truth about the nature of God, who is ineffable and beyond human understanding.

    Epistle of Eugnostos

  • Full of devotion, the people reveled in the ineffable tenderness of Sastha.

    Thiruvullakkavu Sree Dharma Sastha Temple

  • Duration is ineffable and can only be shown indirectly through images that can never reveal a complete picture.

    Duration (philosophy)

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.