† 1. Intractable; incapable of being treated or dealt with; unmanageable. Obs.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., II. pr. viii. (1868), 61. For-as-mochel as thow shalt nat wenen … þat I bere vntretable batayle ayenis fortune.
1430–40. Lydg., Bochas, I. xv. 5638. For Narcisus was nat merciable Toward Echcho,… But in his port was founden ontretable.
c. 1450. Burgh, Secrees, 2196. Yif he be wood and vntretable, He may … thy Reem destroye.
1509. Barclay, Shyp of Folys, 68. If that deth vntretable Arrest the with his mace.
1571. Golding, Calvin on Ps. ii. 9. The greater part avanceth itselfe against him with untreatable feercenesse.
1604–5. in Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., Ser. IV. IV. 137. Parishioners doe fynde mutch faulte with his untreatable reading in the tyme of public prayer.
1675. G. R., trans. Le Grand’s Man without Passion, 137. Anger that wild and untreatable Passion.
a. 1745. Swift, Serm., Wks. 1765, XVI. 31. [It] caused many of them … to be … supercilious and untreatable.
2. Not admitting of medical treatment.
1865. Q. Rev., July, 33. Untreatable by any known remedy, this malady would seem now to have nearly worn itself out.
Hence Untreatableness.
1693. C. Mather, Wonders Invisible World, Def. A 2. The unaccountable Frowardness, Asperity, Untreatableness, and Inconsistency of many persons.
