unexplicableness

English

Etymology

From unexplicable +‎ -ness.

Noun

unexplicableness (uncountable)

Rare form of inexplicableness.
- 1662, Henry More, “An Antidote against Atheism: or, An Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the Mind of Man, whether there Be Not a God. [...] The Third Edition […]. Chapter III.”, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr Henry More […], London: […] James Flesher for William Morden, […], →OCLC, book III, page 149:
  9. That the unexplicableneſs of a Spirit’s moving Matter is no greater argument againſt the truth thereof, then the unconceivableneſs of that line that is produced by the Motion of a Globe on a Plane is an argument againſt the Mobility thereof.
- 1890, Jacob Gould Schurman, “Lecture V. Belief in God as Realizing Purpose in the World.”, in Belief in God: Its Origin, Nature, and Basis […], New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 185:
  We have gained so much more knowledge of nature’s operations that even the correlation of parts and functions in living organisms has no longer that unique unexplicableness that stamped it for earlier thinkers the special product of creative purpose.
- 1902 March 3, “A Notable First Book”, in The Argonaut, volume L, number 1303, San Francisco, Calif.: Argonaut Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, “Literary Notes” section, page 136, column 1:
  “Winstons” is no beefsteak-and-bread-and-butter story. The writer, Miles Amber, has large, if nebulous, ideas. With all the chief characters the idea of the immensity, the strangeness, and unexplicableness of life is dominant.
- 1924 April 8, “Answers to Correspondents”, in Country Life and Stock and Station Journal, volume XXXVI, number 3, Sydney, N.S.W., →OCLC, page 2, column 6:
  What keeps the stars in their place, and the moon in its place and Saturn in its place, was all explained in that Gossip that I sent you, but you have got to remember that the great philosopher said that: “The explanation of that which is explicable, but brings into great clearness, the unexplicableness of that which remains behind.”
- 1990, Siegfried Pflegerl, “Ad REINHARDT”, in Die vollendete Kunst (overall work in German), Vienna; Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, →ISBN, section 6.3.5.9.1 (Post Painterly Abstraktion), page 386:
  Surrealism only represented the artist’s darker, more tragic aspect in its ”decay, aimlessness, discontinuity, unrelatedness, and unexplicableness.”

References

“unexplicableness, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.