intolerable

Not tolerable; not capable of being borne or endured.

Adjective

  1. Not tolerable; not capable of being borne or endured.

    Synonyms: insufferable insupportable unbearable unsittable

  2. Extremely offensive or insulting.
    • It is an intolerable sound that sets spoons tinkling in saucers and windowpanes vibrating. - 1971, William S. Burroughs, The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead, page 4:
    • “I call on all citizens of Berlin and across Germany to wear the yarmulke (as the skullcap is known in Yiddish) next Saturday if there are new, intolerable attacks targeting Israel and Jews on the occasion of Al-Quds...
  3. Extremely worn and degraded, to the point of being unsafe.
    • o take apart an ageing nuclear facility, you have to put a lot of other things together first. New technologies, for instance, and new buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and new reserves of money. - 2022...

Origin

Inherited from Middle English intolerable, borrowed from Middle French intolerable, from Latin intolerābilis. By surface analysis, in- + tolerable.

Forms

more intolerable most intolerable untolerable

Derived

intolerability intolerableness intolerably