a. [UN-1 7 b.]
1. Too dull or distasteful to read.
1802–12. Bentham, Ration. Judic. Evid., Wks. 1843, VI. 441. Take up a history of an old French lawsuit, the evidence is absolutely unreadable.
1837. Hallam, Hist. Lit., I. iv. § 70. Making the entire work unreadable by the most patient … of mankind.
1867. Darwin, in F. Darwin Life & Lett. (1887), III. 96. After the horrid, tedious, dull work of my present huge, and I fear unreadable, book.
2. Illegible through careless or indistinct writing.
1830. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. IV. 182. Oh such letters!… and in such a hand! so pretty and so unreadable!
1861. Wynter, Soc. Bees, 13. An immense number of letters … with directions perfectly unreadable to ordinary persons.
transf. 1839. Carlyle, Chartism, iii. The emblem of darkness, of unreadable confusion.
3. Inaccessible to any reader.
1852. C. B. Mansfield, Paraguay, etc. (1856), 66. Whether I go down by steamer to Monte Video … or whether I go into the interior of San Paulo … is at present written in the Unreadable Book.
Hence Unreadability, Unreadableness.
1856. Vaughan, Mystics, II. VIII. vii. 74. Reason will not attempt to rescue him from condign sentence of unreadableness.
1870. Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. I. (1873), 338. Klopstock himself is … an immortality of unreadableness.
a. 1871. De Morgan, Budget Parad. (1872), 123. It is a climax of unsaleability, unreadability, and inutility.
