Dictionary

unmarriageable en · ADJ

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Germanic *un- Proto-West Germanic *un- Old English un- Middle English un- English un- English marriage Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom Proto-Italic *-ðlom Proto-Italic *-ðlis Latin -bilis Latin -ābilis Old French -ablebor. Middle English -able English -able English marriageable English unmarriageable From un- + marriageable.

Meanings

1. Not marriageable, unsuitable for marriage.
   • You have always had a little way of alluding to her as an unmarriageable girl. 1880, Henry James, chapter VI, in Washington Square, Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 50:
   • He had a way of pronouncing the word "miss" that made it an epithet, a sneer at her unmarried and unmarriageable state. 1912, David Graham Phillips, The Price She Paid, Gutenberg, published 2008:
2. That cannot be reconciled, inconsistent.
   • A link was wanting between two craving parts of nature, and he was hurled into being as the bridge over that yawning need, the mediator betwixt two else unmarriageable facts. 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Method of Nature:
   • […] which is a very curious cross between two things that at first sight may seem unmarriageable, the Wordsworthian enthusiasm and the Byronic despair. 1902, George Saintsbury, Matthew Arnold, Gutenberg, published 2005:

Forms

Deriveds

unmarriageably · unmarriageableness

Translations (1)

fr immariable (not marriageable)