INEFFABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ineffable mean? 

• INEFFABLE (adjective)
  The adjective INEFFABLE has 2 senses:

1. defying expression or description

2. too sacred to be uttered

  Familiarity information: INEFFABLE used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INEFFABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Defying expression or description

Synonyms:

indefinable; indescribable; ineffable; unspeakable; untellable; unutterable

Context example:

a thing of untellable splendor

Similar:

inexpressible; unexpressible (defying expression)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Too sacred to be uttered

Synonyms:

ineffable; unnameable; unspeakable; unutterable

Context example:

the ineffable name of the Deity

Similar:

sacred (concerned with religion or religious purposes)

 Context examples 

She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were now full.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Had you seen her this morning, Mary, he continued, attending with such ineffable sweetness and patience to all the demands of her aunt's stupidity, working with her, and for her, her colour beautifully heightened as she leant over the work, then returning to her seat to finish a note which she was previously engaged in writing for that stupid woman's service, and all this with such unpretending gentleness, so much as if it were a matter of course that she was not to have a moment at her own command, her hair arranged as neatly as it always is, and one little curl falling forward as she wrote, which she now and then shook back, and in the midst of all this, still speaking at intervals to me, or listening, and as if she liked to listen, to what I said.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)