So much of something bad that a person cannot stand it. It is an intensifier — it sits in front of an adjective and pushes it to the top: unbearably hot, unbearably painful, unbearably slow, unbearably loud. The honest thing to tell a student is that it is usually an exaggeration. When someone says the afternoon was unbearably hot, they did in fact bear it; they are telling you how it felt, not reporting a fact. This is normal and everyone does it, and it is why the word appears so often in complaints about weather, traffic, and waiting. Two twists are worth knowing. Writers use it with words that are not bad at all — 'unbearably beautiful', 'unbearably sweet' — meaning the feeling is so strong it almost hurts. And 'unbearably' can attach to social discomfort: an unbearably awkward silence, an unbearably smug colleague. Taiwan's summer, for the record, is the example every student reaches for first, and quite rightly.