inexplicability

English

Etymology

From inexplicable +‎ -ity.

Noun

inexplicability (uncountable)

1. The state of being difficult to account for; the state of being inexplicable.

   Synonym: inexplicableness

   • 1803 (date written), [Jane Austen], chapter XXVI, in Northanger Abbey; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC:

     [T]he inexplicability of the general’s conduct dwelt much on her thoughts.

   • 1887, Thomas Henry Huxley, “On the Reception of the ‘Origin of Species’”, in Francis Darwin, editor, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin‎^[1], volume I, New York: D. Appleton & Company, page 557:

     The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.

   • 1929, Lloyd C. Douglas, chapter 18, in Magnificent Obsession‎^[2]:

     […] Doctor McLaren had made a few last-minute substitutions for certain erudite terms he feared might overshoot his congregation; but, even with these begrudged alterations in the cause of clarity, the address was as one scientist to another, and the people who heard it were at once flattered and befuddled by its charming inexplicability.

   • 1997 October 5, Charlotte Faltermayer, “Delivered to their Deaths”, in Time:

     By Monday, the small town of Franklin, New Jersey (pop. 5,000), had become an Alfred Hitchcock crime scene, with two suspects arrested for murders so pointless that their inexplicability was virtually a cinematic device.