How to Use ineffable in a Sentence

ineffable

adjective
  • What else is there to say in the face of the ineffable?
    — Literary Hub, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Such is the ineffable at-once-ness of these moments.
    — Literary Hub, 4 May 2026
  • That ineffable quality that drew him to her in the first place?
    — Kayleigh Roberts, Marie Claire, 25 Nov. 2018
  • In the face of the ineffable, A’s fans have been grasping for metaphor.
    — Ellen Cushing, The Atlantic, 1 Oct. 2024
  • Every man will seek with ineffable ardour the good of all.
    — Roy Scranton, JSTOR Daily, 18 Sep. 2025
  • The greatest movie stars are ones that combine their raw skill with a kind of ineffable glimmer.
    — Esther Zuckerman, Time, 29 Aug. 2025
  • There is something ineffable about a monarch's lying in state.
    — WSJ, 17 Sep. 2022
  • For non-players of chess, there’s something far more ineffable.
    — Angela Watercutter, Wired, 28 Oct. 2020
  • Light, of course, has long formed an ineffable through line in the work of Roman and Williams.
    — Sam Cochran, Architectural Digest, 19 Nov. 2024
  • An attempt to capture the ineffable feelings of kids as summer ends falls flat.
    — Matthew Lickona, National Review, 13 Aug. 2022
  • By stirring us so powerfully, birds bring us up against the ineffable in a telling, pathos-laden way.
    — Ben Downing, WSJ, 16 Nov. 2018
  • La’eeb, the ineffable mascot, held a rainbow banner that was on fire.
    — Sam Knight, The New Yorker, 3 Dec. 2022
  • There's this ineffable sense of stiffness at lower frame rates that, for certain types of games, is a detriment.
    — Wired, 8 Dec. 2019
  • But this approach misses the essence of this ineffable concept.
    — Ray Kurzweil, Discover Magazine, 25 Sep. 2012
  • The change has altered his music in ways both quantifiable and more ineffable.
    — Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 23 Feb. 2016
  • If Liu is a conduit, so too, in some ineffable sense, is Costanzo.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 5 Sep. 2024
  • That, for you at least, that ineffable quality that gives a density, a weight.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 26 June 2026
  • If so, the variations have been endless, the themes ineffable.
    — Mark Rozzo, Vanities, 30 May 2018
  • To me, its defining trait is an ineffable comic sound, as nervy and raucous as the subway during rush hour.
    — Jason Zinoman, New York Times, 14 Sep. 2022
  • Sometimes an actor seemed to glow with a private, ineffable fire, only to lose the spark halfway through the play.
    — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 31 Jan. 2022
  • The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit and filled me with ineffable sadness.
    — New York Times, 5 Mar. 2021
  • Others are drawn by the ineffable — the mystique around a place so close, but so unfamiliar.
    — Kevin Sieff, Washington Post, 19 Jan. 2023
  • Cult film audiences feel an ineffable connection to a film and to each other.
    — Donald Liebenson, IndieWire, 24 Apr. 2026
  • There’s an ineffable beauty in the shot of a pecan being deshelled, the meat suddenly revealed.
    — Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire, 25 Jan. 2025
  • There are people who, in the depths of some ineffable despair or rage, desire to exit the world in a hail of bullets and a flood of blood.
    — The Editors, National Review, 2 Oct. 2017
  • That ineffable Kylie essence is always present regardless of whether Minogue wrote on a song or not.
    — Rebecca Milzoff, Billboard, 29 Feb. 2024
  • That ineffable charge continued to feel palpable as the lights went down and a thunderous roar went up.
    — Sophie Williams, Billboard, 19 Sep. 2025
  • That will to stardom, that ineffable self-belief, is the key to Fanny’s code, and Michele cracks it.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 28 Sep. 2022
  • The sloth, about the size of a large sheepdog, hung upside down and stared at me with an expression of ineffable sadness on its furry face.
    — New York Times, 29 May 2018
  • Yes, Neptune Frost’s narrative is tough to boil down, but that’s part of its ineffable magic.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 3 Aug. 2022

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