UNSPEAKABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does unspeakable mean? 

• UNSPEAKABLE (adjective)
  The adjective UNSPEAKABLE has 3 senses:

1. defying expression or description

2. exceptionally bad or displeasing

3. too sacred to be uttered

  Familiarity information: UNSPEAKABLE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNSPEAKABLE (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:

Exceptionally bad or displeasing

Synonyms:

abominable; atrocious; awful; dreadful; painful; terrible; unspeakable

Context example:

an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room

Similar:

bad (having undesirable or negative qualities)

Sense 3

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 

You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

My rage is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It would have been an unspeakable indulgence.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear divinity.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

His words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but Elinor, who sat with her head leaning over her work, in a state of such agitation as made her hardly know where she was.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I went over the packs, and found, to my unspeakable horror, that any one who was in the secret could hold them in dealing in such a way as to be able to count the exact number of high cards which fell to each of his opponents.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Quite by accident, of course, some pretty, easy music lay on the piano, and with trembling fingers and frequent stops to listen and look about, Beth at last touched the great instrument, and straightway forgot her fear, herself, and everything else but the unspeakable delight which the music gave her, for it was like the voice of a beloved friend.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

After much debate, they concluded unanimously, that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally lusus naturæ; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)