- 1無法預見的、事先無從得知的（強調「誰都不可能料到」，常見於合約與新聞：不可預見的情況）。
Something unforeseeable could not have been known in advance — not because you were careless, but because nobody could have known. That is the heart of the word: it is about what was possible to predict, not about what someone happened to predict.
This makes it a defending word. When a company says 'the delay was caused by unforeseeable circumstances', it is arguing that no reasonable person could have seen this coming, so it is not their fault. You will find it most in contracts, insurance policies, legal writing, news reports, and business apologies. That legal weight is why the word matters: whether an event was foreseeable or unforeseeable can decide who pays.
It is formal. In ordinary talk we say 'nobody could have known' or 'it came out of nowhere'.
Compare it with its close relative 'unforeseen'. Unforeseen means it simply was not predicted — perhaps it could have been, but nobody did. Unforeseeable is the stronger claim: it was impossible to predict. Someone defending themselves will always prefer 'unforeseeable'.
組成un- ('not') + fore- ('before, ahead') + see + -able ('able to be'). Piece by piece: 'not able to be seen ahead of time'. The fore- here is the same one in forecast, foretell, and forehead — the part in front.
同家族的字
- foreseethe verb inside it — to see something coming before it happens.
- foreseeablethe positive twin, most often met in the fixed phrase 'for the foreseeable future', meaning 'for as long ahead as we can sensibly plan'.
- forecastsame fore- meaning 'ahead of time' — literally to throw ahead.
- foretell, forewarnthe same fore- again: to tell, or to warn, in advance.
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
unforeseeableadj
- 1
Incapable of being foreseen or anticipated.
- The proposition that socialism can only come about by revolution thus becomes a tautology; Jaurès failed to notice this, and dismissed the question as to what form the revolution would take as a barren speculation relating to the unforeseeable future.
- Traincrew management has always been a bit of a black art, rather than a science. The present traincrew difficulties that beset the UK rail industry are neither new nor were they unforeseeable.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。