a. [UN-1 7 b.]
1. Not tuneful; unmelodious, inharmonious, harsh-sounding.
1545. Elyot, Absonus voce, he that hath an vntunable voyce.
1569. Sanford, Agrippa, 185 b. The vnpleasaunte and vntunable roringe of Asses.
1595. Spenser, Col. Clout, 374. Or be the shepheards which do serue her laesie,… Or be their pipes vntunable and craesie.
1655. trans. Sorel’s Com. Hist. Francion, IV. 11. The most untunable musick in the world.
1688. in Wood, Life (O.H.S.), III. 274. A boy … with a cat under his coat … made her make … an untunable noise.
1748. Melmoth, Fitzosborne Lett., lix. (1749), II. 100. [It] might probably give musick to those lines in Horace, which now seem so untuneable.
1796. Burney, Mem. Metastasio, III. 307. Constructed in measures wholly untuneable.
1841. D’Israeli, Amen. Lit., I. 100. The Normans could not endure the Saxons’ untunable consonants.
1887. W. G. Palgrave, Ulysses, 34. The four church bells … have been ringing a very hospitable, though untuneable, peal.
b. fig. or in fig. context.
1591. Shaks., Two Gent., III. i. 208. In dumbe silence will I bury mine [sc. news], For they are harsh, vn-tuneable, and bad.
1592. Sandys, Europæ Spec. (1605), B 2 b. I will not heere warble long vpon this vntuneable harsh string.
1610. P. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 8. It is wholly patched up of untuneable discords and jarring absurdities.
1645. [see UNATONABLE 1].
1661. J. Stephens, Procurations, 129. That which … in him … seemeth … untunable and out of square and friendly compasse.
2. Incapable of being tuned.
1801. Busby, Dict. Mus., s.v.
3. Not appreciative of music.
1851. Keble, Occas. Papers & Rev. (1877), 251. The colours are spread before the blind; the music falls on untunable ears.
Hence Untunableness.
1611. Cotgr., Desaccord, a jarre, discord, untuneablenesse.
1659. H. More, Immort. Soul, III. ix. 420. The tenderer Ear cannot but feel … some harshness and untunableness or other, in the best consorts of Musical Instruments and Voices.
1691. Norris, Pract. Disc., 217. As the untunableness of one or two Instruments dis-recommends the whole Musical Consort.
1756. J. Warton, Ess. on Pope, I. ii. 65. The harshness and untuneableness of modern languages.
1832. Westm. Rev., Oct., 357. An age which finds beauties in untuneableness, and believes exact intonation would be an evil and a loss.
