unmanageable

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,155 of 15,258neutral

Unmanageable means too difficult or too large to control. An unmanageable workload, unmanageable hair, become unmanageable.

It is a judgement about capacity rather than effort, which is why saying a workload has become unmanageable is a statement rather than a complaint. Of hair it is affectionate and universal.

Definitions of unmanageable

1adjectiveunmanageableToo difficult or too large to control.C1
“The garden became unmanageable after he broke his leg, and weeds grew everywhere.”

unmanageable is a quality.

Where it comes from

From un- + manageable.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

unmanageable in the wild

When the number of requests proved unmanageable, the Zork Users Group began a pay-per-hint telephone system.
InvisiClues
With a record 6,000 athletes participating in the games, the event was in danger of growing unmanageable.
1995 All-Africa Games
Since a list like this might grow too big and become unmanageable, this list is confined to programs for which a Wikipedia article exists.
List of Classic Mac OS software
Instruction creep or rule creep occurs when instructions or rules accumulate over time until they are unmanageable or inappropriate.
Instruction creep
Students can be stuck with large and unmanageable debt loads, defaulting at a significantly higher rate than students at traditional non-profit institutions.
Proprietary college

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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.

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