{"id":7512,"date":"2014-12-16T14:27:20","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T14:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/12\/16\/word-of-the-day-inenarrable\/"},"modified":"2014-12-16T14:27:20","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T14:27:20","slug":"word-of-the-day-inenarrable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/12\/16\/word-of-the-day-inenarrable\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: ‘Inenarrable’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stumbled upon this word  yesterday on p. 140 of John Williams' 1965 novel, Stoner<\/em>.  (Don't let the title of this underappreciated masterpiece put you off: it is not about a stoner but about a professor of English, surname 'Stoner.') Williams puts the following words in the mouth of Charles Walker, "Confronted as we are by the mystery of literature, and by its inenarrable power, we are behooved to discover the source of the power and mystery."<\/span><\/p>\n

As you might have  guessed, 'inenarrable'  means: incapable of being narrated, untellable, indescribable, ineffable, unutterable, unspeakable, incommunicable.  One would apply this high-falutin' word to something of a lofty nature, the hypostatic union, say, and not to some miserable sensory quale such as the smell of sewer gas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Serendipitously, given recent Christological inquiries, I just now<\/a> came across the word in this passage from Cyril of Alexandria:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

We affirm that different are the natures united in real unity, but from both comes only one Christ and Son, not that because of the unity the difference of the natures is eliminated, but rather because divinity and humanity, united in unspeakable and inennarrable<\/em> unity, produced for us One Lord and Christ and Son.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stumbled upon this word  yesterday on p. 140 of John Williams' 1965 novel, Stoner.  (Don't let the title of this underappreciated masterpiece put you off: it is not about a stoner but about a professor of English, surname 'Stoner.') Williams puts the following words in the mouth of Charles Walker, "Confronted as we are … Continue reading “Word of the Day: ‘Inenarrable’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}