incomprehensibility

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin in- Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Indo-European *preh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-i Proto-Indo-European *préh₂i? Proto-Italic *prai Proto-Italic *prai- Proto-Indo-European *gʰed- Proto-Indo-European *-né- Proto-Indo-European *-ti Proto-Indo-European *gʰnédti Proto-Italic *hendō Proto-Italic *praiɣendō Latin prehendō Latin comprehendō Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlis Proto-Italic *-ðlis Latin -bilis Latin comprehēnsibilis Latin incomprehēnsibilisbor. Middle French incomprehensibleder. English incomprehensible Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-ts Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts Latin -itāsder. Old French -itebor. Middle English -ite English -ity English incomprehensibility From incomprehensible + -ity.

1. The quality or state of being incomprehensible.

   “We should be quite willing to desist from the demand of a dogmatical answer to our questions, if we understood beforehand that, be the answer what it may, it would only serve to increase our ignorance, to throw us from one incomprehensibility into another, from one obscurity into another still greater, and perhaps lead us into irreconcilable contradictions.”

   “The king here alludes, as he does in various other passages, to the ancient Academicians, or Sceptics, who taught the uncertainty and incomprehensibility of truth.”

2. Something that cannot be understood.

   “That left Bradly as bemused as ever, for it posed another incomprehensibility: Why had Podson walked here?”