unreadable
adjective
un·read·able
ˌən-ˈrē-də-bəl 
: not readable: such as
a
: not decipherable : illegible
unreadable handwriting
b
: impossible to read and understand : incomprehensible
… a flawed, unreadable, misleading bill that garnered support based on propaganda and clever—but false—talking points.—
Marilyn M. Singleton
Marilyn M. Singleton
c
: impossible to interpret
The expression on her face was unreadable.
d
: not enjoyable or interesting enough to engage the reader
an unreadable novel
Examples of unreadable in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
These include spirals of English-language text that’s mostly unreadable, because the words are usually overwritten with other ones.
—Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2024
Danielle Carr Given too much room to roam, an Adderall article or essay can become overly ambitious, wandering and sprawling out into a totally unreadable (and unpublishable) manifesto that usually ends up foundering under the weight of overload.
—Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 26 Mar. 2024
Winslet digs deep into her professional bag of tricks to make Elena’s motivations and wellness unreadable.
—Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Feb. 2024
On March 3, the Voyager mission team noticed that activity from one section of the flight data subsystem, was different from the rest of the computer's unreadable data stream.
—Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 15 Mar. 2024
In May, Ars Technica reported on SanDisk Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 SSDs wiping data before often becoming unreadable to the user's system.
—Scharon Harding, Ars Technica, 10 Aug. 2023
This means your Vault won't become unreadable in the future even if Obsidian ceases to exist.
—PCMAG, 22 Jan. 2024
This error correction capability allows a certain percentage of the QR code's data to be restored if it's damaged or obscured, permitting a level of modification without making the code unreadable.
—Benj Edwards, Ars Technica, 6 June 2023
Anyone in a Dostoyevsky novel who went on an unreadable rant was bound to be contradicted, in a matter of pages, by another ranting character holding the opposite view: a technique known as dialogism, which features prominently both in Russian novels and in my own thinking.
—Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2023
Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2024
Danielle Carr Given too much room to roam, an Adderall article or essay can become overly ambitious, wandering and sprawling out into a totally unreadable (and unpublishable) manifesto that usually ends up foundering under the weight of overload.
—Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 26 Mar. 2024
Winslet digs deep into her professional bag of tricks to make Elena’s motivations and wellness unreadable.
—Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Feb. 2024
On March 3, the Voyager mission team noticed that activity from one section of the flight data subsystem, was different from the rest of the computer's unreadable data stream.
—Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 15 Mar. 2024
In May, Ars Technica reported on SanDisk Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 SSDs wiping data before often becoming unreadable to the user's system.
—Scharon Harding, Ars Technica, 10 Aug. 2023
This means your Vault won't become unreadable in the future even if Obsidian ceases to exist.
—PCMAG, 22 Jan. 2024
This error correction capability allows a certain percentage of the QR code's data to be restored if it's damaged or obscured, permitting a level of modification without making the code unreadable.
—Benj Edwards, Ars Technica, 6 June 2023
Anyone in a Dostoyevsky novel who went on an unreadable rant was bound to be contradicted, in a matter of pages, by another ranting character holding the opposite view: a technique known as dialogism, which features prominently both in Russian novels and in my own thinking.
—Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unreadable.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Dictionary Entries Near unreadable
Cite this Entry
“Unreadable.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unreadable. Accessed 25 Apr. 2024.
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