Word
ineffable
Phoneticsin·ef·fa·ble
US/ˌɪˈnɛfəbəɫ/
UK/ɪnˈɛfəbəl/
Definition
adj. too great or beautiful to be described with words. You use this when a feeling is so strong that you cannot explain it exactly.
adj. too great, sacred, or intense to be expressed or described in words. Frequently used in literary or theological contexts to denote qualities beyond human comprehension.
Examples
“The mountain sunset fills her with ineffable joy.”
“After the long journey, the travelers felt an ineffable sense of relief as they finally crossed the border.”
“The poet spent years trying to capture the ineffable beauty of the arctic landscape, yet eventually admitted that language alone could never match the physical experience.”
Examples
simple
“The mountain sunset fills her with ineffable joy.”
contextual
“After the long journey, the travelers felt an ineffable sense of relief as they finally crossed the border.”
complex
“The poet spent years trying to capture the ineffable beauty of the arctic landscape, yet eventually admitted that language alone could never match the physical experience.”
Real-World Examples
“It’s a warning theologians and philosophers have long repeated: “To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote.” “It’s a challenge to translate the ineffable into words or photos — but the Hungarian photographer does it anyway.” “A recurring sentiment among the visitors was that the performance was a deep revelation for which words were not sufficient. If this is true, then something about it was ineffable.” “We’re in the territory, here, of the ineffable: the stuff we can’t express because it’s beyond the power of language to do so.” Etymology
From Middle French ineffable (modern French ineffable), from Latin ineffābilis, from in- (“not”) + effor (“utter”) + -bilis (“-able”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/ineffable