ineffable
adjective
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Breaking Down the Roots of Ineffable
"Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness," wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography. Reading Douglass's words, it's clear that ineffable means "indescribable" or "unspeakable." And when we break the word down to its Latin roots, we see how those meanings came about. Ineffable comes from ineffābilis, which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effābilis, meaning "capable of being expressed." Effābilis comes from effārī, "to speak out," which in turn comes from ex- and fārī, meaning “to speak.”
Examples of ineffable in a Sentence
Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times, 28 Feb. 2025
The telescope will observe each ecliptic pole once every orbit all mission long, seeking something seemingly ineffable: the faint signal of all the light emitted over the universe’s history, which SPHEREx scientists will then parse out across time.
—Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 28 Feb. 2025
Get a musubi or two, which is marvellous, the squishy pillow of rice, the ineffable Spamminess of Spam, the sweet smear of teriyaki.
—Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 16 Feb. 2025
And in later scenes, as Jesse finally confronts Spencer's death, her ineffable pain is etched across Menzel's achingly expressive face.
—Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 14 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Ineffable.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ineffable. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.
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ineffable
adjective
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