indescribability

English

Noun

indescribability (countable and uncountable, plural indescribabilities)

  1. (uncountable) The state or characteristic of being indescribable.
    • 1879, Henry Hartshorne, John Russell Reynolds, The Sense of Beauty‎[1], H. C. Lea, page 769:
      Sensorial changes are by no means uncommon, and they are of every kind, description, and indescribability.
    • 1880, Edmund Gurney, The Power of Sound‎[2], Elder Smith, page 119:
      These ideas may seem at first sight somewhat startling; but when we realise the extraordinary depth and indescribability of the emotions of music, the very remoteness and far-reachingness of the explanation is in favour of its validity.
    • 1896, George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty‎[3], C. Scribner's Sons, pages 97-98:
      This perception, if we look to its origin, may turn out to be primitive; no doubt the feeling of "crude extensity" is an original sensation; every inference, association, and distinction is a thing that looms up suddenly before the mind, and the nature and actuality of which is a datum of what — to indicate its irresistible immediacy and indescribability — we may well call sense. Forms are seen, and if we think of the origin of the perception, we may well call this vision a sensation.
    • 1910, Thomas Carlyle, The Sense of Beauty‎[4], Burt, page 15:
      But the unembodied Justice, whereof that other is either an emblem, or else is a fearful indescribability, is not so visible!
    • 1919, Edward Nares, Psychological Review 1919-11: Volume 26, Issue 6‎[5], American Psychological Association, page 426:
      The featurelessness of the affective quality, on the other hand, its indescribability, is due to the very simplicity of its relation to the organism.
    • 1992, H. M. Vroom, “Can Religious Experience Be Shared?”, in J. D. Gort et al., editors, On Sharing Religious Experience, Eerdmans Publishing, →ISBN, page 7:
      This emphasis on the indescribability of God in intense religious experience is consistently found in the more mystical religious traditions.
  2. (countable) Something which cannot be described.
    • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 2”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, (please specify |book=I or IV, or the page):
      The clothed embodied justice that sits in Westminster Hall, with penalties, parchments, tipstaves, is very visible. But the unembodied justice, whereof that other is either an emblem, or else is a fearful indescribability, is not so visible!

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