How to Use unintelligible in a Sentence

unintelligible

adjective
  • The rest of the freestyle was unintelligible, and it was not shot well, either.
    — Armon Sadler, VIBE.com, 25 Mar. 2025
  • Unless it is made clear what is meant by the latter, the first remains unintelligible and vague.
    — Vikram Sampath, Quartz India, 20 Aug. 2019
  • The woman could be heard yelling in the background, her words unintelligible.
    — Blake Nelson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Apr. 2023
  • Ordaz, standing in the street near the front of his car, said something unintelligible to the deputies.
    — Matthew Ormseth, Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2021
  • Four officers pull him through a hole in the roof, and Ramos moans and makes unintelligible sounds.
    — Dallas News, 18 Oct. 2022
  • But a nasal fistula—a hole between his nose and mouth—made his speech garbled and unintelligible.
    — Dave Eshleman, The Mercury News, 7 Jan. 2024
  • The arena fills with the static screech of a girl’s almost unintelligible screams.
    — Men's Health, 28 Nov. 2022
  • Nichols asks why he was stopped, but there is no apparent answer (large chunks of the video are either silent or unintelligible).
    — Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 27 Jan. 2023
  • Modern physics, to most of us, is unintelligible, but who cares when physics gives us smartphones and hydrogen bombs?
    — John Horgan, Scientific American, 7 July 2022
  • Due to her stroke, Claire's mother's speech is slurred to such an extent that half her lines are rendered unintelligible.
    — Dmitry Samarov, Chicago Reader, 22 June 2018
  • While the voices in the clip are speaking English, most of it is unintelligible.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 20 Apr. 2021
  • Though it might have been filled with music—such as the Byzantine liturgy, which was sung there—the words would have been unintelligible.
    — The New Yorker, 31 Oct. 2022
  • The lyrics are unintelligible and the backing track is the definition of dull.
    — Kris Holt, Forbes, 12 Aug. 2022
  • The man responded, but his words are unintelligible in the recording.
    — Charlotte Observer, 20 May 2026
  • Most of the drawings are unintelligible, but there are a few recognizable scenes.
    — Nomaan Merchant, Cincinnati.com, 9 July 2018
  • Notably, the researchers tested the system on people whom it had not been trained on and found that the results were unintelligible.
    — Julia Musto, Fox News, 3 May 2023
  • Some of the dispatcher’s questions are met with unintelligible sounds.
    — Los Angeles Times, 2 Sep. 2019
  • Even if the data is encrypted and unintelligible—as the recordings from all major smart speakers are—it can be tracked or saved for later.
    — Eric Limer, Popular Mechanics, 4 Oct. 2017
  • The sometimes unintelligible lyrics roll out over spare acoustic guitar in what sounds like an unfinished demo.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 16 Jan. 2025
  • But when the meeting started, the audio was garbled and unintelligible as city staff made a presentation on the item.
    — Luke Harold, San Diego Union-Tribune, 19 Feb. 2024
  • One officer calls out to the boy, his words unintelligible as another officer fires three rounds into the room.
    — James Hartley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 27 Feb. 2024
  • Or would its perception of the world, its entire ordering of consciousness, be so alien as to be unintelligible?
    — Camille Bromley, WIRED, 29 Aug. 2023
  • The gallery is filled with an a cappella song, written and sung by Gates, that resembles a hymn but is largely unintelligible.
    — Sharon Mizota, Los Angeles Times, 14 Oct. 2019
  • All the Mayan languages share a common root, but most of them are mutually unintelligible.
    — Rachel Nolan, The New Yorker, 30 Dec. 2019
  • On the whole, Wheeler and Chao made a host of unintelligible arguments.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 19 Sep. 2019
  • Zhuang, their bishop, was born in this area and, like them, speaks Hakka, a language that is unintelligible to many Chinese.
    — Emily Rauhala, Washington Post, 11 Mar. 2018
  • The vendor said some other things that were unintelligible because of the overlap between her live speech and the lagging translation.
    — Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 16 Oct. 2025
  • Several accounts have also claimed to use audio isolation to prove an unintelligible shout in the video is warning the teen about a fin in the water.
    — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 5 June 2023
  • There has been no election by the people [unintelligible] since 2007.
    — Breccan F. Thies, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 31 Jan. 2024
  • Photos and videos circulated on social media show a large crowd near the sign and unintelligible graffiti spray-painted on the sign.
    — Mike Brest, Washington Examiner, 30 May 2020

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