inexhaustibility en · NOUN
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin in-bor. Middle English in- English in- Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰ Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰs Proto-Italic *eks Latin ex Latin ex- Proto-Indo-European *h₂ews- Proto-Indo-European *h₂ews-ye-tider. Proto-Italic *auziō Latin hauriō Latin exhauriō Latin exhaustusder. English exhaust Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom Proto-Italic *-ðlom Proto-Italic *-ðlis Latin -bilis Latin -ibilis Old French -ibleder. Middle English -ible English -ible English exhaustible English inexhaustible Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-ts Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts Latin -itāsder. Old French -itebor. Middle English -ite English -ity ▲ English in- ▲ English exhaustible ▲ English -ity English exhaustibility English inexhaustibility From inexhaustible + -ity or in- + exhaustibility.
Meanings
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(uncountable) The state or condition of being inexhaustible.
He had produced the mightiest things as painter and sculptor. And, as if nature were to show her inexhaustibility in this single man, a position had been allotted him by the juncture of events, which at once placed before him, when as a young man he was just beginning to work for himself and the world, the highest task of all, and made him enter, in the twenty years which he had still before him, upon that work, by which he stands, in architecture also, as the greatest of modern masters.
1865, Herman Friedrich Grimm, Life of Michael Angelo, Little, Brown, and Company, page 303:Extending our view to the erection of moral and political systems, we find innumerable evidence of the inexhaustibility of patience.
1851, Classic Union, No. 1 (I), Union University, page 226:Concerning the address, suffice it to say that the truth of the only statement upon which dissension has been raised —by a carping minority who have entirely misunderstood the real meaning implied—has been more fully verified at each subsequent sitting (we refer to the inexhaustibility of the herring-fisheries).
1883, Nature, Macmillan and Company, page 35: