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unfathomable

UK/(ˌ)ʌnˈfæðəməbl̩/US/ˌʌnˈfæð(ə)məb(ə)l/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,075 of 15,258leans spoken

Unfathomable means too deep or too strange to be understood. You cannot get to the bottom of it.

The image is literal, since to fathom was to measure the depth of water with a line, and a fathom is six feet. Something unfathomable is deeper than the line reaches. The word describes decisions, motives and mysteries, and it is often used with a note of exasperation, since an unfathomable decision usually means one the speaker thinks is stupid. The verb fathom survives mainly in the negative, as in I cannot fathom it.

Definitions of unfathomable

  1. 1adjectiveunfathomableImpossible to understand or get to the bottom of.C1

    “For some unfathomable reason they painted it orange.”

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *peth₂-

  2. English, today

    unfathomable

From un- + fathom + -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

unfathomable in the wild

  • Agam Kuan ("unfathomable well") is an ancient well and archaeological site in Patna, Bihar, India.

    Agam Kuan

  • The term comes from the Greek word abyssos, meaning "deep, unfathomable, boundless".

    Abyss (religion)

  • The prison doctor Samuel Kahn (the novel's narrator) disagrees with this due to his deep insight into Lingard's unfathomable psyche.

    The Killer (Wilson novel)

  • The Washington Post described /b/ as "an unfathomable grab-bag of the random, the gross and the downright bizarre".

    /b/

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.