un-unravelable

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ unravelable.

Adjective

un-unravelable (comparative more un-unravelable, superlative most un-unravelable)

1. (rare) That cannot be unravelled; (by extension) difficult to understand.
   • 2000, Martin Samuel Cohen, book review, Conservative Judaism, Volume 53, Number 1, Fall 2000, page 92:

     Indeed, most moderns who know Luria's work only from secondary sources would be completely flummoxed to encounter the texts themselves with their endlessly arcane numerology, almost indescribably peculiar eroticism and byzantine, almost un-unravelable mythology.

   • 2009, Bill Prady and Lee Aronsohn, "The Loobenfeld Decay", episode 1-10 of The Big Bang Theory, 00:08:25-00:08:35:

     Sheldon Cooper: Well, first of all, your lie was laughably transparent, where mine is exquisitely convoluted. While you were sleeping, I was weaving an un-unravelable web.
     

   • 2013, Elizabeth Adler, Please Don't Tell, pages 301–302:

     Two hours later, she waved JC off and set out for the Italian market where she bought Parma ham, sliced so wafer-thin it needed little sheets of wax paper between each slice, so they would not stick together in one un-unravelable lump, […]

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:un-unravelable.

   Synonyms: inextricable, irresolvable, (difficult to understand) unfathomable

   Antonym: unravelable

Usage notes

This term is rarely used and generally only employed for humorous effect due to the somewhat clumsy reduplication of un-; the first being the adjective prefix un- indicating negation, and the second the verbal prefix un- indicating reversal of an action.

Note that the two prefixes are different in meaning, and therefore this is not a double negative (compare the same construction in un-undoable, which does not mean "doable" but "irreversible").

Translations

that cannot be unravelled

• French: indénouable (fr)
• German: unlösbar (de)