Unspeakable

How to spell unspeakable

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce unspeakable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unspeakable mean?

1. adjectiveSo bad, shocking, or extreme that it cannot adequately be described in words.

Unspeakable in a sentence

• The report described unspeakable conditions inside the prison.

• The survivors recalled the unspeakable cruelty they had witnessed.

Where does unspeakable come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English formation built from three transparent parts: the negative prefix un-, the verb speak (from Old English specan, an earlier variant of sprecan, meaning to utter words aloud), and the Latin-derived suffix -able, which marks something as capable of being done. The word literally means not able to be spoken, and it has been recorded in English since the 1400s. Its earliest uses were quite literal, describing things too sacred or too vast to put into words, but over time it drifted toward a moral sense, describing acts so dreadful that decent people will not name them. The verb speak is one of the oldest words in the language, sharing a Germanic ancestry with the modern German sprechen. The spelling trap lies in the middle: the silent stretch from speak keeps its full ea cluster, and the -able ending sounds like the more common -ible, which tempts a wrong vowel.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• speak (utter in words)
• -able (capable of being)