Ineffable

WORD OF THE DAY

ineffable / adjective / in-EFF-uh-bul

Definition
1a: incapable of being expressed in words
1b: indescribable
1c: unspeakable
2a: not to be uttered
2b: taboo

Examples
"But onstage alone, talking to a crowd, he's smooth as can be. A seductive presence, he has that ineffable quality of stardom: a preternatural ability to connect."
— Jason Zinoman, The New York Times, 28 May 2022

Watch the movie to get a sense of that ineffable ingredient, and the sometimes-subtle ways that Streisand deploys it.
— Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 26 May 2022

Did You Know?
"Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness," wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography.
Reading Douglass's words, it's clear that ineffable means "indescribable" or "unspeakable."
And when we break the word down to its Latin roots, we see how those meanings came about.
Ineffable comes from ineffābilis, which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effābilis, meaning "capable of being expressed."
Effābilis comes from effārī, "to speak out," which in turn comes from ex- and fārī, meaning “to speak.”