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incalculability

Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being incalculable, or indeterminable by calculation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being incalculable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The quality or state of being incalculable.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And so on, and so on; there is fortunately no saying on what, for the particular pair of eyes, the window may NOT open; “fortunately” by reason, precisely, of this incalculability of range.

    The Portrait of a Lady 2003

  • It is said by those who ought to know - and by others, who also ought to know, it is disputed - that in matters which to all appearances are rational, calculable and achieved by the combined efforts of architects, draughtsmen, engineers, workers - accomplishments such as a bridge - there remain a few millimetres or centimetres of incalculability.

    Heinrich Böll - Nobel Lecture 1972

  • This incalculability (tiny with regard to the masses being treated and shaped) may stem from the difficulty of calculating with the nicest precision a mass of complicated interlocking chemical and technical details and materials in all their possible reactions, including the effects of the four classical elements (air, water, fire and earth).

    Heinrich Böll - Nobel Lecture 1972

  • This remainder of incalculability, be it only fractions of millimetres, which correspond to unforeseen tiny differences in extension - what shall we call them?

    Heinrich Böll - Nobel Lecture 1972

  • If Germany has always been a country with a mentality too intricate, too complex, too unintelligible to be pressed into one spiritual formula this incalculability has grown during the last months to a degree which is almost unbelievable.

    The New Germany 1932

  • Athenian People, their indifference and procrastination, i.; ii. their incalculability, i. their traditions and traditional policy, i.; ii.

    The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 384 BC-322 BC Demosthenes 1912

  • It is more comprehensive and more personal than chance; it has not the immutable, the “lawbound” character of fate; rather it denotes the incalculability, the capriciousness associated, especially in earlier usage, with the word fortune, but without the tendency of this word to be used in a good sense.

    Atheism in Pagan Antiquity Ingeborg Andersen 1897

  • But what Shakespeare perhaps felt even more deeply, when he wrote this play, was the _incalculability_ of evil, -- that in meddling with it human beings do they know not what.

    Shakespearean Tragedy Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth 1893

  • The great fact all the while, however, had been the incalculability; since he _had_ supposed himself, from decade to decade, to be allowing, and in the most liberal and intelligent manner, for brilliancy of change.

    The Jolly Corner Henry James 1879

  • And so on, and so on; there is fortunately no saying on what, for the particular pair of eyes, the window may NOT open; "fortunately" by reason, precisely, of this incalculability of range.

    The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 Henry James 1879

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