unanswerable

Not answerable; impossible to answer.

Adjective

  1. Not answerable; impossible to answer.

    Synonyms: answerless

    Antonyms: answerable

  2. Impossible to dispute or rebut; irrefutable; conclusive.
    • If I have not said much about it before, it was, of course, that the Professor's earnest desire was that no possible rumor of the unanswerable argument which we carried should be allowed to leak out until the moment...
    • The map is never an unanswerable argument in transportation. - 1926, Great Britain Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Economic Series, Issues 1-6, H.M. Stationery Office, page 75:

    Synonyms: indisputable

    Antonyms: disputable inconclusive refutable

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Germanic *un- Proto-West Germanic *un- Old English un- Middle English un- English un- English answer Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlis Proto-Italic *-ðlis Latin -bilis Latin -ābilis Old French -ablebor. Middle English -able English -able English answerable English unanswerable From un- + answerable.

Forms

more unanswerable most unanswerable unaunswerable

Related

answerless unanswerability unanswerableness unanswerably

Noun

  1. Something that cannot be answered.
    • These unanswerables are left open to the viewer's own construction by the sculptor. - 2005, Anupam Nagar, Recritiquing John Keats, page 55:

Forms

unanswerables unaunswerable