indescribability

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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 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!

• indescribableness
• undescribableness

• describability
• describableness