indescribability

plural indescribabilities

1. uncountableThe state or characteristic of being indescribable.

   Sensorial changes are by no means uncommon, and they are of every kind, description, and indescribability.

   1879, Henry Hartshorne, John Russell Reynolds, The Sense of Beauty, H. C. Lea, page 769

   5 more examples

   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.

   1880, Edmund Gurney, The Power of Sound, Elder Smith, page 119

   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.

   1896, George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, C. Scribner's Sons, pages 97-98

   But the unembodied Justice, whereof that other is either an emblem, or else is a fearful indescribability, is not so visible!

   1910, Thomas Carlyle, The Sense of Beauty, Burt, page 15

   The featurelessness of the affective quality, on the other hand, its indescribability, is due to the very simplicity of its relation to the organism.

   1919, Edward Nares, Psychological Review 1919-11: Volume 26, Issue 6, American Psychological Association, page 426

   This emphasis on the indescribability of God in intense religious experience is consistently found in the more mystical religious traditions.

   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

2. countableSomething which cannot be described.

   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!

   1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 2”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, (please specify |book=I or IV, or the page)