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unmarriageable

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From un- +‎ marriageable.

Adjective

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unmarriageable (comparative more unmarriageable, superlative most unmarriageable)

  1. Not marriageable, unsuitable for marriage.
    • 1880, Henry James, chapter VI, in Washington Square[1], Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 50:
      You have always had a little way of alluding to her as an unmarriageable girl.
    • 1912, David Graham Phillips, The Price She Paid[2], Gutenberg, published 2008:
      He had a way of pronouncing the word "miss" that made it an epithet, a sneer at her unmarried and unmarriageable state.
  2. That cannot be reconciled, inconsistent.
    • 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Method of Nature:
      A link was wanting between two craving parts of nature, and he was hurled into being as the bridge over that yawning need, the mediator betwixt two else unmarriageable facts.
    • 1902, George Saintsbury, Matthew Arnold[3], Gutenberg, published 2005:
      [] which is a very curious cross between two things that at first sight may seem unmarriageable, the Wordsworthian enthusiasm and the Byronic despair.