unutterable
/ʌnˈʌt(ə)rəb(ə)l
/adjective
Too great or awful to describe: moments of unutterable grief I felt an unutterable fool...
- In this poem, the line that introduces the variation, ‘But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,’ is also the line that tells us for the first time what the unutterable grief is about.
- He was often frightened that he was losing his memory, though the doctors had found no evidence of this, and even his failure to recall things he might plausibly have forgotten thirty years ago filled him with unutterable terror.
- By consciously subverting the genre of figurative painting, he evokes a miscellaneous sense of emptiness, horror, desire and unutterable inner fire with Eastern religious connotations.
Synonyms
indescribable, beyond words, beyond description, inexpressible, unspeakable, undefinable, beggaring description, inconceivable, unthinkable, unheard of;
extreme, intense, great, overwhelming;
dreadful, awful, appalling, horrible, terrible, insufferable
marvellous, wonderful, superb, splendid, ineffable, unimaginable, profound, deep, ecstatic
Derivatives
unutterably
/ adverb [as submodifier]: Juliet felt unutterably weary...
- I merely found myself walking in a forest, half-clad, footsore, unutterably weary and hungry.
- But this one combines his growing sense of time with a subtly mutated idiom in an unutterably cute three-word package.
- But once you are on terra firma, you will realise that this island is an almost perfect French creation - unutterably stylish, slightly pretentious and peculiarly French (despite being in the Caribbean).