How to Use illegible in a Sentence

illegible

adjective
  • On many, the names, birth years and death years are illegible.
    — Kamal Morgan. Produced With Ai Assistance, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 29 June 2026
  • The names, birth years and death years are illegible on many headstones.
    — Kamal Morgan, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 24 June 2026
  • But way too many of its scenes take place in tedious, illegible darkness.
    — New York Times, 22 Apr. 2021
  • The date is filled in, and the illegible name of some pesticide.
    — Elisa Albert, Longreads, 7 May 2018
  • Wilson showed her a picture of their first tag, an illegible scrawl.
    — Madeleine Wulfahrt, New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Small-size black ink against a gray background is almost illegible.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 4 Aug. 2024
  • An image that looks great at a small size on a large screen might become tiny and illegible when scaled down on a small screen.
    — Rob Weychert, ProPublica, 4 Feb. 2022
  • The letters are smudged and the last third of the paragraph is nearly illegible.
    — New York Times, 11 June 2021
  • Also that thing where sometimes if text is illegible a model might just invent the text.
    — Ars Technica, 11 Mar. 2025
  • Managers flagged signs as being worn and illegible.
    — Madison Dapcevich, Outside, 11 Mar. 2026
  • All six were partially slashed in the attack, which left at least one largely illegible.
    — News Desk, Artforum, 25 July 2024
  • One call center agent said the issue was that his paperwork was illegible.
    — Hannah Dreier, Anchorage Daily News, 22 Dec. 2021
  • One call center agent said the issue was that his paperwork was illegible.
    — Washington Post, 21 Dec. 2021
  • Sometimes the names on census forms are illegible or spelled differently from one year to the next.
    — Tracy Scott Forson, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Feb. 2024
  • Even if yours does, the date can become basically illegible over time.
    — Nina Bahadur, SELF, 12 Sep. 2019
  • In addition, an illegible word was written on the back of the statue, and blue paint was spattered around the base.
    — Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY, 24 July 2019
  • For me, writing on a phone screen was even more illegible, leading to lots of transcription errors.
    — Larry Magid, The Mercury News, 30 Aug. 2019
  • Much like Littlefinger's scroll, the font was pretty illegible at first glance.
    — Christopher Rosa, Glamour, 30 Aug. 2017
  • Most of these park signs are either dented, on rusty poles, illegible or contradict each other.
    — John Michael Pierobon, Sun Sentinel, 25 May 2025
  • The anxiety is rooted in the mundane rather than the arch and limns how such mental strife makes others illegible to you.
    — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture, 19 Dec. 2025
  • The scholar, though, refused to allow her labor, her work, or her voice, which is so clear on the page, be rendered illegible.
    — Kirsten West Savali, Essence, 25 Nov. 2020
  • Image From the ground, though, looking up, the work is a glowing, cherry smudge — the idea of a sign, but illegible.
    — Martha Schwendener, New York Times, 13 Mar. 2024
  • In the past three years or so, however, tremors in my hands have rendered my handwriting mostly illegible.
    — Jacobina Martin, Washington Post, 2 Nov. 2022
  • Gina Costa found that the city overpaid for work, and that tow slips were incomplete or illegible.
    — Brian Amaral, BostonGlobe.com, 23 Mar. 2023
  • The bottles may have missing or illegible lot codes and expiration dates.
    — Jenna Anderson, Health, 30 Jan. 2026
  • As Palmer looked on, Jacobsen's scrawl became more and more illegible.
    — Dennis Manoloff, cleveland.com, 2 Aug. 2017
  • Faulty machinery and mail ballots with illegible barcodes were partly to blame for the delay in results.
    — Dallas News, 4 Nov. 2020
  • The Farsi text is illegible to most viewers, and even those who can read the language would not know the real meaning of the poems.
    — Max Norman, ARTnews.com, 9 Dec. 2024
  • The fragment, which takes on the shape of what looks like Africa and parts of East Asia, is completely illegible.
    — Susie Schmank, Indianapolis Star, 7 Oct. 2017
  • However, the menu changes daily, written in near-illegible notebooks, so best to ask for the verbal version.
    — Bon Appetit, 25 June 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'illegible.' 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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