unintelligible

comparative more unintelligible · superlative most unintelligible

1. Not intelligible; unable to be understood.

   Unintelligible announcements on station loudspeakers are both irritating and confusing.

   1953 August, “Station Announcements”, in Railway Magazine, page 506

   4 more examples

   And indeed, my lord, there are so many passages in your writing in this controversy with me, which for their construction, as well as otherwise, are so unintelligible to me, that if I should be so unmannerly as to measure your understanding by mine, I should not know what to think of them.

   1697, John Locke, Letter to the Bishop of Worcester (second reply)

   They have ſwallowed and digeſted all the Fathers, the Codes, Provincials, Decretals, Pandects, Councils, Canons ; are Maſters of all the Schoolmen, not to fill their Heads and ſtuff their Writings with Quiddities and Quoddities, and far-fetched unintelligible Diſtinctions, but to be able to reaſon cloſely, to argue ſolidly, to rebuke, to confute, to reply, to rejoind, to ſyllogize, to criticize, to apologize, to advertize, to ſermonize, to decypherize, to――

   1744, A Dialogue Between the Rev. Mr. Jenkin Evans and Mr. Peter Dobson, concerning Bishops., London: M. Cooper, at the Globe in Pater-noſter-row, →OCLC, page 37

   The curious feature of the art was that "horse-whisperers" actually talked to the animal, usually from mouth to ear, in an unintelligible tongue; which, however, the horses appeared to understand.

   1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 216

   Lately, a study was made of oracle-bone inscriptions excavated in 1899 in the T'ang-yin county, 湯陰縣, of Honan Province and amounting to several thousand pieces, having unintelligible inscriptions whose dates nobody could determine.

   清代學術概論

   1959, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, translated by Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period [清代學術概論], Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page xxxiv

   Synonyms: inscrutable, unexplainable