INSCRUTABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does inscrutable mean? 

• INSCRUTABLE (adjective)
  The adjective INSCRUTABLE has 1 sense:

1. of an obscure nature

  Familiarity information: INSCRUTABLE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INSCRUTABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of an obscure nature

Synonyms:

cryptic; cryptical; deep; inscrutable; mysterious; mystifying

Context example:

rituals totally mystifying to visitors from other lands

Similar:

incomprehensible; inexplicable (incapable of being explained or accounted for)

Derivation:

inscrutability (the quality of being impossible to investigate)

 Context examples 

He is a quiet, inscrutable fellow; as most of those Indians are.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He is such an inscrutable fellow that I never quite know what to make of him.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproached her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutable reason he considered the glasses personal.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For an hour or more he was at work, returning at last with his feet heavy with snow and his features as inscrutable as ever.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the cook entered.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved to be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak with Poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be admitted into that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In what is that man assisting him, who never looks at me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but talk I would.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’s ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)