How to Use irretrievable in a Sentence

irretrievable

adjective

• The data was irretrievable after the computer crashed.
• That irretrievable three hours was probably not a good use of my time.
  — Mark Settle, Forbes, 12 Apr. 2022
• Nadal hit the ball at his feet, but Thiem managed a half-volley that turned into an irretrievable drop shot.
  — New York Times, 11 May 2018
• This meant the dose — which cost the hospital an irretrievable $500 — had decayed and was now useless.
  — Sarah Varney, Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2018
• In Suzume, there are many kinds of mourning, tied to the many kinds of irretrievable, often intertwined loss — of a person, a time, a tradition, a home.
  — Kayti Burt, Rolling Stone, 15 Apr. 2023
• The genre seems not just out of fashion, but outdated, a relic of the irretrievable American past.
  — Michael Auslin, National Review, 3 Aug. 2017
• For Bodie, much of the past is as tantalizing and irretrievable as the meaning of private jokes in an old yearbook.
  — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2023
• The documents confirmed the irretrievable deletion not just of the main server but also of two backups on Aug. 9.
  — Washington Post, 26 Oct. 2017
• Before the gore begins (and even mid-action), West seems to truly consider the pain of irretrievable youth, and feel for those whose final years are consumed by it.
  — John Defore, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 Mar. 2022
• That purposeful spilling, and the fact that something spilled cannot be unspilled, denotes for Calasso the irretrievable nature of time’s arrow and time’s wound.
  — New York Times, 28 Apr. 2020
• The book touches on the terror of the Nazi years and the repression of imposed by communism, all filtered through a sense of longing for a sensuous and irretrievable past.
  — Washington Post, 8 Sep. 2021
• Some of the losses incurred in my youth—most particularly, the lifelong repercussions of my time with Salinger—are irretrievable.
  — Joyce Maynard, Vogue, 13 Sep. 2018
• The drawings, beautiful and grim in equal measure, open up an emotional chasm of imminent and irretrievable loss.
  — Christopher Knight, latimes.com, 3 Aug. 2017
• And the only irretrievable loss of time has been due to our homeland’s irretrievable lapse into exhaustion.
  — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, WSJ, 1 Oct. 2020
• The concrete did irretrievable damage and in 1981, it was removed and replaced with a large pole and cable system, which remain today, holding up the remaining leaders.
  — Kate Bennett, CNN, 26 Dec. 2017
• Then, over the centuries (and especially in the 20th), nostalgia became less about longing for homeland and more about longing for home-time — for something static and irretrievable.
  — Washington Post, 28 Dec. 2021
• Entropy also means loss of opportunity: The water at the top of a dam can spin a turbine; at the bottom, that same energy has degraded, the potential to be useful irretrievable.
  — WIRED, 27 Sep. 2023
• The gesture, one likely to be recognized by any number of Ms. Rodin’s contemporaries whose 30s are long behind them, seemed a wistful acknowledgment that the past is irretrievable.
  — Ruth La Ferla, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2022
• While the losses are irretrievable and emotional wounds still sting, Lee said Asian and Black Angelenos have achieved a remarkable amount of healing and community-building in the intervening years.
  — NBC News, 28 Apr. 2022
• Untold tonnes end up as irretrievable ocean flotsam, which sunlight and salt fragment into microscopic pieces that attract toxins and may be gulped by creatures that become seafood.
  — The Economist, 1 Mar. 2018
• But those masters still represent an irretrievable loss.
  — New York Times, 11 June 2019
• With the murder weapon irretrievable and DNA evidence unavailable, prosecutors will be forced to rely on witnesses that, for the most part, come with extensive personal baggage.
  — Christian Boone, ajc, 20 June 2018
• Taking a scan of an injured brain often produces a map of irretrievable losses, revealing spots where damage causes memory difficulties or tremors.
  — Benjamin Mueller, BostonGlobe.com, 13 June 2022
• The state, alone and by itself, is powerless to stop an ineligible individual from casting an irretrievable ballot even if election officials know with certainty that the person is a felon or a non-citizen.
  — Andy Cilek, Twin Cities, 28 Apr. 2017
• For a moment, Zolciak and Biermann’s relationship looked irretrievable.
  — Kelly Wynne, Peoplemag, 13 July 2023

Last Updated: 20 Oct 2024