Unbeatable

How to spell unbeatable

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce unbeatable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unbeatable mean?

1. adjectiveImpossible to defeat or surpass; far better than any rival.

Unbeatable in a sentence

• The shop offered an unbeatable price on the new laptop.

• With three games left, their lead looked unbeatable.

Where does unbeatable come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a transparent English compound built from three native and well established parts. The prefix 'un-' is an old Germanic negative particle, inherited through Old English, meaning simply 'not'. The core 'beat' descends from Old English 'beatan', meaning 'to strike repeatedly', a sense that broadened over centuries to include defeating an opponent in a contest. The suffix '-able' arrived through Old French from the Latin '-abilis', meaning 'capable of being' or 'fit to be', and English speakers attached it freely to verbs to form adjectives. Put together, the parts literally describe something that cannot be defeated, and the word came into common use in the modern sense of 'impossible to surpass' by the nineteenth century. The spelling trap is keeping the single 't' from 'beat' rather than doubling it, and remembering the '-able' ending rather than '-ible'.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• beat (to defeat)
• -able (capable of being)