Used of words, comments or replies that are too rude, too shocking or too offensive to write down. Its literal meaning is "cannot be printed", but that is not really the point — of course any word can physically be printed. It is a polite dodge. A newspaper writes "his reply was unprintable" precisely so that it does not have to print the swearing, and the reader fills in the gap themselves, usually with something worse than what was actually said. That is the trick of the word: it hides the language and points at it at the same time, which is why it often sounds slightly amused rather than shocked. You see it in phrases like "his comments were unprintable", "what she said is unprintable", and in the joking "he called me something unprintable". English also has a small set of these polite dodges — unrepeatable, unmentionable — and they work the same way. There is a rarer plain use, meaning a file or image is of too low quality to print properly, but a learner will almost always meet the rude sense. As a noun, unprintables (usually plural) means the words themselves — this is rare and old-fashioned, and you can safely leave it in books.

不堪入耳的、不便刊登的（粗話、髒話）。中文沒有完全對應的詞；報導裡多半寫成「爆出不雅字眼」「內容不便轉述」。要抓住它是一種婉轉的說法——用「不能印」來代替直接寫出髒話。