Meaning & use
unintelligible
Impossible or very difficult to understand, especially because of unclear speech or writing.
See it in a sentence
His mumbled apology was almost unintelligible over the noise of the crowd.
The professor's dense jargon made the article unintelligible to most students.
A note on using this word
Unintelligible usually describes speech, writing, or sound rather than a person, so it is better to say his speech was unintelligible than he was unintelligible.
Words with a similar meaning
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Words with an opposite meaning
intelligibleclear
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