Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Not readily spoken or expressed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective philosophy Not capable of being said.
  • adjective rare Not allowed or not fit to be said.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • Although much of the early history of the restaurant is "unsayable" - according to Sir George, that's only partly due to the romantic liaisons which started there.

    New Zealand Herald - Top Stories 2010

  • Very often you don’t know what that is, but if you get to a state where you almost stumble upon what the unsayable is for you, you recognise it.

    Hypnosis for Writer’s Block « Write Anything 2008

  • For all that blogging has, at least partly, grown up around saying the unsayable, that is not the point of what follows.

    Blogposts | guardian.co.uk 2009

  • Over the weekend, NBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd took to his Twitter account to say what The Plum Line's Greg Sargent characterizes as one of those "unsayable" things in the political discourse: namely that the "only way for Dems to secure bipartisan cooperation is to completely embrace Republican proposals and nothing more."

    Bipartisanship Missing From Final Votes: Whose Fault Is That? 2010

  • Over the weekend, NBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd took to his Twitter account to say what The Plum Line's Greg Sargent characterizes as one of those "unsayable" things in the political discourse: namely that the "only way for Dems to secure bipartisan cooperation is to completely embrace Republican proposals and nothing more."

    Bipartisanship Missing From Final Votes: Whose Fault Is That? 2010

  • But the real point is that by the 1990s, Michelman's arguments were basically "unsayable," at least by "mainstream" law professors (including Michelman himself).

    Balkinization 2006

  • I'll take that "unsayable" in the sense of ugly, unpleasant, or disagreeable, and the phenomenon therefore as a common haplology.

    languagehat.com: STILL UNPACKED. 2005

  • The Technology newsbucket: SPARQLS pieces together linked data, Yahoo laid bare, and Wolff says the "unsayable"

    Technology: Technology blog | guardian.co.uk 2010

  • The Technology newsbucket: SPARQLS pieces together linked data, Yahoo laid bare, and Wolff says the "unsayable"

    Technology: Technology blog | guardian.co.uk 2010

  • The Technology newsbucket: SPARQLS pieces together linked data, Yahoo laid bare, and Wolff says the "unsayable"

    Megite Technology News: What's Happening Right Now 2010

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