Literary notes about unintelligible (AI summary)
In literature, the word “unintelligible” is employed to evoke a sense of elusive meaning or to characterize language and ideas that defy straightforward understanding. Authors use it to describe abstract, transcendent states or mysterious forces—for instance, a sublime yet vague happiness that is "unintelligible" despite its emotional clarity [1]—as well as to denote speech that is difficult to decipher, whether because of dialectal divergence or sheer obscurity [2, 3]. It also appears in discussions of philosophical or systematic thought where complex ideas are rendered "unintelligible" to the uninitiated [4, 5], and even in everyday situations where familiar words slip into incoherence or paradox [6, 7]. In this way, the term becomes a versatile tool for reflecting on the limits of human communication and understanding across various narrative and discursive contexts [8, 9].
- With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere, towards a state of happiness noble, unintelligible, yet clearly indicated.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust - Unfortunately your whistling, though melodious, is unintelligible.
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw - he got itt,” and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - And even then, after a grammatical form has become obsolete and unintelligible, it by no means loses its power of further development.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - Communication of Motion by Impulse, or by Thought, equally unintelligible.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 by John Locke - I felt as if, from the order of the systematic world, I had plunged into chaos, obscure, contrary, unintelligible.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - To his daughter it was unintelligible, and he did not enlighten her.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle - I do not ascribe to the will that unintelligible necessity, which is supposed to lie in matter.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - To Fanny, however, who had known too much opposition all her life to find any charm in it, all this was unintelligible.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
