Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Impossible to comprehend or grasp fully: inconceivable folly; an inconceivable disaster.
- adj. So unlikely or surprising as to have been thought impossible; unbelievable: an inconceivable victory against all odds.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Incapable of being conceived, or realized in the imagination; incredible; inexplicable.
- An expression which conveys no conception whatever, but is mere gibberish, is not called inconceivable, but unintelligible. The word inconceivable (see also unconceivable) is used in the following senses in philosophy: Involving a contradiction in terms, such as the idea of a non-existent being.
- Unacceptable to the mind because involving a violation of laws believed to be well established by positive evidence, as a perpetual motion.
- Unimaginable by man on account of an inseparable association, although not perhaps involving any contradiction nor even physically impossible, as the perception of color without extension.
- Unimaginable to a particular person from novelty, as the idea that parallel straight lines meet at infinity.
- Capable of being conceived only by a negative or relaive notion, such as the idea of infinity.
- Incredible; not to be imagined as believed in by any man, as the supposition of an event undetermined by a cause.
Wiktionary
- adj. unable to be conceived, unbelievable
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not conceivable; incapable of being conceived by the mind; not explicable by the human intellect, or by any known principles or agencies; incomprehensible.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. totally unlikely
Examples
“It would be more correct, in fact, to restrict the use of the term inconceivable to the former case: for although we cannot think, or construe to ourselves logically, an efficient cause or mind, such a cause is so far from being inconceivable to reason that reason expressly demands and affirms it.”
Theism: The Witness of Reason and Nature to an All-Wise and Beneficent Creator.
“What's inconceivable is if you use the password saving feature, all your passwords are displayed in your settings with no encryption and no password protection to view all your information.”
Google Chrome 2 Brings New Features And Serious Speed | Lifehacker Australia
“It's not so inconceivable, is it -- at least in the context of a Broadway-musical romance -- that a refrain might strike lovers as magically fresh or revelatory every time it was repeated?”
The Huffington Post: Tom Gliatto: A Complaint About Sondheim
“But hieroglyphics and histories which seem to pass the bounds of belief I call inconceivable; yet even among these last there are many which our method enables us to investigate, and to discover the meaning of their narrator.”
“First steps have been taken in the conversion of military industries, and what seemed inconceivable is happening: recent Cold War adversaries are establishing cooperation in this area.”
“Hamilton's use of the word inconceivable, and finds that it is applied in three senses, in one of which all that is inexplicable, including the first principles, is held to be inconceivable.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery
“Harrington was throwing in inconceivable flourishes, while Malemute Kid, utterly abandoned, had seized the broom and was executing mad gyrations on his own account.”
“It is necessary to advert to a double meaning of the word inconceivable, which Mr. Spencer is aware of, and would sincerely disclaim founding an argument upon, but from which his case derives no little advantage notwithstanding.”
“We now, therefore, know positively that Mr. Spencer always endeavors to use the word inconceivable in this, its proper, sense: but it may yet be questioned whether his endeavor is always successful; whether the other, and popular use of the word, does not sometimes creep in with its associations, and prevent him from maintaining a clear separation between the two.”
“It is possible that some of the likes were similar to the famous line by Inigo Montoya in the movie "The Princess Bride", where said of Vizzini's repeated use of the word inconceivable: "I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘inconceivable’.
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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One Worders
Famous one word lines from movies. http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2012/05/the-best-one-...
rosebud, Bueller, plastics, inconceivable, Stella, freedom, Adrian, attica, khan, wolverines, toga, juicyfruit and 11 more...
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ghost
This is Ghost List 2 ( the kind that go 'boo!' ) :P
( open list )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/macabrephantom, spectral, specter, spectre, spooky, poltergeist, haunt, spirit, banshee, cryptic, shadow, phantasm and 311 more...
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simply silly and oft ludicrous
words that amuse, are not (yet?) real or simply tickle you in a strange way
nincompoop, funemployed, phantasmagoria, flabbergast, hippopotomonstros..., nurdle, nitwit, staccato brain fa..., synapse epilepsy, inconceivable, inconceivable, paraprosdokian and 1 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 941 more...
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reginaterra's Words
purl, blow, squish, andean, generality, adaptation, lush, pack, filter, acquiesce, abstraction, sweet and 508 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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farfetched
farfetched, improbable, long shot, implausible, don't hold your b..., beggar belief, unbelievable, unlikely, inconceivable, pipe dream
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SAT PSAT ALPHABETICAL I
iconoclast, idiosyncrasy, ignoble, ignominious, illicit, illusory, illustrious, imbibe, imbue, immaculate, immaterial, immolate and 155 more...
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Mollusque's miscellany
A mixture of words that I like or have commented on, along with ones parked here so they'd be listed somewhere or remind me of lists I want to make.
oranger, monographer, preoccupied, bu, bobization, coinventor, tetrapyloctomy, borgmannian, suspercollate, manhug, mancrush, obituarist and 604 more...
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Favorites
machiavellian, mercurial, deus ex machina, synecdoche, litotes, phallic, freudian, metonymy, chrestomathy, falsifiable, gestalt, truthiness and 211 more...
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tomax's Words
legerdemain, yayo, extravasation, wont, faze, coxswain, concomitant, enclave, unguent, rhabdomyolysis, effluent, puerile and 432 more...
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pcofdirt's Words
besmirched, befuddled, ai, sanguineous, antidisestablishm..., ablation, ascertain, ascerbic, aardvark, begot, benign, buggery and 118 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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Sat Vocabulary List
abandon, abash, abate, abjure, ablution, abnegate, abominable, aboriginal, abortive, abrade, abridge, abrogate and 2155 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for inconceivable.
oroboros See unbearable. Mar 9, 2010
uselessness Whoever created the Vizzini account to record a pronunciation, I think I'm in love with you. Dec 3, 2009
Prolagus Hee hee! See here. Sep 11, 2008
seanahan I do not think this word means what you think it means. Dec 13, 2006