unreadable

unreadable
unreadable (adj.) c.1810, of written material, "dull, distasteful," from UN- (Cf. un-) (1) "not" + READABLE (Cf. readable). Meaning "illegible" is from 1830.

Etymology dictionary. 2014.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?
Synonyms:

Look at other dictionaries:

  • unreadable — index inapprehensible, pedestrian, unclear Burton s Legal Thesaurus. William C. Burton. 2006 …   Law dictionary

  • unreadable — [adj] illegible cacographic, crabbed, difficult to read, hard to make out*, incomprehensible, indecipherable, scrawled, scribbled, unclear, undecipherable; concepts 535,576 …   New thesaurus

  • unreadable — ► ADJECTIVE 1) not clear enough to read; illegible. 2) too dull or difficult to be worth reading. DERIVATIVES unreadability noun unreadably adverb …   English terms dictionary

  • unreadable — [unrēd′ə bəl] adj. not readable; specif., a) not legible or decipherable b) too dull, difficult, etc. to be read with pleasure, comprehension, etc …   English World dictionary

  • unreadable — [[t]ʌ̱nri͟ːdəb(ə)l[/t]] 1) ADJ GRADED (disapproval) If you use unreadable to describe a book or other piece of writing, you are criticizing it because it is very boring, complicated, or difficult to understand. For some this is the greatest novel …   English dictionary

  • unreadable — unreadability, unreadableness, n. unreadably, adv. /un ree deuh beuhl/, adj. 1. not readable; undecipherable; scribbled: His scrawl was almost unreadable. 2. not interesting to read; dull; tedious; an unreadable treatise. 3. extraordinarily… …   Universalium

  • unreadable — un|read|a|ble [ ʌn ridəbl ] adjective 1. ) an unreadable book is very difficult to read, for example because it is not very good or the subject is too complicated 2. ) unreadable writing or printing is impossible to read because it is very small… …   Usage of the words and phrases in modern English

  • unreadable — UK [ʌnˈriːdəb(ə)l] / US [ʌnˈrɪdəb(ə)l] adjective 1) mainly literary if someone s face, eyes, or expression are unreadable, you cannot guess what they are thinking 2) unreadable writing or printing is impossible to read because it is very small or …   English dictionary

  • unreadable — un|read|a|ble [ʌnˈri:dəbəl] adj 1.) if someone s expression or face is unreadable, you cannot tell what they are thinking 2.) an unreadable book or piece of writing is difficult to read because it is boring or complicated 3.) unreadable writing… …   Dictionary of contemporary English

  • unreadable — adjective a) That cannot be read or is not easy to read. unreadable handwriting b) Not sufficiently interesting to be worth reading. a machine that cut up secret documents into small unreadable fragments Syn: illegible, indecipherable, unc …   Wiktionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”