inenubilable

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English[edit]

WOTD – 28 November 2020

Etymology[edit]

From English in- (prefix meaning ‘not’) + Latin ēnūbilāre (“to clear of clouds or mist; (figurative) to clear of obscurity”) + English -able (suffix meaning ‘able to be done’ forming adjectives),[1] possibly coined by the English critic and essayist Max Beerbohm (1872–1956): see the 1903 and 1911 quotations below.[2]

Ēnūbilāre is derived from ē- (a variant of ex- (prefix denoting privation)) + nūbilus (“cloudy, overcast; (figurative) beclouded, confused, troubled”) (from nūbēs (“cloud; (figurative) concealment, obscurity”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)newdʰ- (“to cover”)) + -āre.[3]

Pronunciation[edit]

Adjective[edit]

inenubilable (comparative more inenubilable, superlative most inenubilable) (formal, literary, rare)

  1. Incapable of being cleared of clouds.
    • 1944 autumn, Crescendo: A Laboratory for Young America, volume 3, Waco, Tex.: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 26, column 2:
      As blue and gray go the clouds / Round and about, turning forever / Upon this focus which is the ineluctable you / This minute, this hour, this day, this afternoon that is forever, / Under this never inenubilable sky.
    • 1962, Charles Kinbote [pseudonym; Vladimir Nabokov], “Commentary”, in Pale Fire, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, published November 1985, →ISBN, page 194:
      Our blue inenubilable Zembla, and the red-capped Steinmann, and the motorboat in the sea cave, and—
  2. (figurative) Inexplicable, mysterious, unclear.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:incomprehensible, Thesaurus:mysterious, Thesaurus:nebulous
    • 1903 February 7, “Max” [pseudonym; Max Beerbohm], “Ibsen’s ‘Epilogue’”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume XCV, London: […] David Jones, [...], →OCLC, pages 168–169; republished in Michael Egan, editor, Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage, London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 1972 (1999 printing), →ISBN, page 402:
      They go, but are overwhelmed by an avalanche, while the wife and the huntsman escape unharmed. This business of the avalanche is treated by the critics as something quite inenubilable. Yet what could be plainer than [Henrik] Ibsen's meaning?
    • 1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, chapter XII, in Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1912, →OCLC, pages 197–198:
      For there is nothing in England to be matched with what lurks in the vapours of these meadows, and in the shadows of these spires—that mysterious, inenubilable spirit, spirit of Oxford.
    • 1989, Syed M. Afzal Qadri, Police and Law: A Socio-legal Analysis, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir: Gulshan Publishers, →OCLC, page 139:
      But for some inenubilable reasons, it is not the law that he may lawfully arrest a guilty person whom the court opines he had not reasonable ground to suspect.
    • 2007, Andrew Haas, The Irony of Heidegger (Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy), London, New York, N.Y.: Continuum International Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 36:
      [(...] it may be simply inenubilable, not merely because the ontological difference cannot be bridged by analogy or equivocation, identity or difference or sameness, but also because the means appropriate for an analytic of Dasein may not function for being, or because the results of one investigation may not apply to the other—just as results in vitro don't always apply in vivo, just as Plato's task in the Republic of finding justice in the soul by searching for it in the city may be doomed to failure).

Related terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

inexplicable, mysterious, unclear — see inexplicable,‎ mysterious,‎ unclear

References[edit]

  1. ^ “inenubilable, adj.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1976.
  2. ^ John Dougill (1998) “From Mists to Myths—Enchantments of the Middle Ages”, in Oxford in English Literature: The Making, and Undoing, of ‘The English Athens’, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, page 12: “‘Inenubilable’ is an instance of Beerbohm’s penchant for neologisms and would seem to mean ‘incapable of being made uncloudy’.”
  3. ^ Compare “enubilate, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1891.
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