- 1聽不懂的、難以理解的（尤指口齒不清或含糊到根本聽不出字）
Impossible to understand. It is used in two rather different situations, and it helps to see both.
First, and most often, about sound: speech you cannot make out. A voice on a bad phone line, someone mumbling, a station announcement swallowed by echo, a drunk person, a singer whose words disappear into the music. Here the problem is not the ideas — it is that you cannot even catch the words. Court and meeting transcripts write "[unintelligible]" where the recording defeats the typist, which tells you the flavour exactly.
Second, about writing or explanation: a text so tangled, technical, or badly organised that a reader gets nothing from it. "The instructions were unintelligible." That use carries a hint of blame — you are saying the writer failed, not that you are slow.
It is a formal word; in conversation people usually say "I couldn't understand a word" or "it made no sense". Worth knowing that it is absolute in tone: it means *nothing* got through, not that it was difficult.
組成un-（不）+ intelligible（可理解的）。intelligible 來自拉丁文 intelligere「理解」，字面是 inter「在……之間」+ legere「挑選、讀」——在許多東西之間挑出意思來。
同家族的字
- intelligiblethe positive form
- intelligentsame Latin intelligere, to understand
- intelligencesame root
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。
unintelligibleadj/ˌʌnɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒɪbəl/
- 1
Not intelligible; unable to be understood.
- And indeed, my lord, there are so many passages in your writing in this controversy with me, which for their construction, as well as otherwise, are so unintelligible to me, that if I should be so unmannerly as to measure your understanding by mine, I should not know what to think of them.
- They have ſwallowed and digeſted all the Fathers, the Codes, Provincials, Decretals, Pandects, Councils, Canons ; are Maſters of all the Schoolmen, not to fill their Heads and ſtuff their Writings with Quiddities and Quoddities, and far-fetched unintelligible Diſtinctions, but to be able to reaſon cloſely, to argue ſolidly, to rebuke, to confute, to reply, to rejoind, to ſyllogize, to criticize, to apologize, to advertize, to ſermonize, to decypherize, to――
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。