a. and sb. [UN-1 7.]
1. Not intelligible; incapable of being understood. Also absol.
1616. Bullokar, Eng. Expos., Vnintelligible, which cannot be vnderstood.
1647. Cowley, Mistr., Womens Superstit., i. Or I’m a very Dunce, or Womankind Is a most unintelligible thing.
1684. T. Burnet, Theory Earth, I. 259. The trajection … is to me, I confess, unintelligible.
1717. Berkeley, Tour Italy, Wks. 1871, IV. 527. The ruins above ground are pretty unintelligible.
1796. Mme. D’Arblay, Camilla, V. 516. This is … so incredible—so unintelligible!
1834. Lamb, Wks. (1908), I. 454. Coleridge … had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain.
1871. Jowett, Plato, I. 26. He made an unintelligible attempt to hide his perplexity.
b. Of language, statements, etc., or persons in respect of such.
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., I. xii. 53. Men … choose rather to confesse he is Incomprehensible,… than to … confesse their definition to be unintelligible.
1683. Brit. Spec., 40. Their Records also were preserved in the Greek Tongue and Characters … unintelligible by the Vulgar.
1703. De Foe, More Reform., 41. To b’ Unintelligible is a Crime.
1765. Johnson, Shakespeare’s Plays, I. p. lxviii. Homer has fewer passages unintelligible than Chaucer.
1841. Lane, Arab. Nts., I. 113. Where, taking a little of its water, she pronounced over it some unintelligible words.
1884. Solicitors’ Jrnl., 8 Nov., 29/2. The prisoner … having an impediment in his speech, which made him unintelligible and unable to read it.
c. sb. An unintelligible thing.
1838. Southey, Doctor, cxlix. V. 176. As two negatives make an affirmative, it might be found that two unintelligibles make a meaning.
† 2. Unintelligent. Obs.–1
1694. R. Franck, North. Mem., 121. Nor has it any Claim or Title from the Lough Minever, as superstitiously surmiz’d by the unintelligible Inhabitant.
