unintelligibleness

Now this fine subtilty is a consequence of their putting bodies into a body, and so likewise is the unintelligibleness of the manner how one is contained in the other.

Essays and Miscellanies 2004

In the more restricted field of society as in a simple problem which leads up to a more complex one of the same order, the unintelligibleness resulting from my conversation with this young woman owing to our having lived in a particular society at an interval of twenty-five years, impressed me with the importance of history and may have strengthened my own sense of it.

Time Regained 2003

He gave vent to his agony, as he lay prostrate on his pallet, in wails of anguish and vituperative mutterings; uttered in the unintelligibleness of his own language.

Fern Vale (Volume 1) or the Queensland Squatter Colin Munro

But it so happened, unfortunately, that his own words were not plain; that his catastrophes came with a crashing and sudden unintelligibleness which left men in doubt whether the thing were a catastrophe or a great stroke of good luck; that his conclusion, though it rang like a trumpet to the four corners of heaven, was in its actual message quite inaudible.

Robert Browning 1905

His adjectives always embarrassed her: their unintelligibleness savored of impropriety.

The Mission of Jane 1902

His adjectives always embarrassed her: their unintelligibleness savored of impropriety.

The Descent of Man and Other Stories Edith Wharton 1899

Thus while the two leaders were urged to coalescence by one motive, their followers were largely swayed by another, and this added much to the mystery and general unintelligibleness of the movement.

The Critical Period of American History John Fiske 1871

But their main resource probably was in the obscurity, almost amounting to unintelligibleness, of their responses.

Lives of the Necromancers William Godwin 1796

Having proved that the commission given by our Lord to His disciples is still binding on us, having reviewed former undertakings for the conversion of the heathen from the Ascension to the Moravians and "the late Mr. Wesley" in the West Indies, and having thus surveyed in detail the state of the world in 1786, he removes the five impediments in the way of carrying the Gospel among the heathen, which his contemporaries advanced -- their distance from us, their barbarism, the danger of being killed by them, the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of life, the unintelligibleness of their languages.

Life of William Carey George Smith 1876