1. = INEXPLICABLE a. 2.
1532. More, Confut. Tindale, Wks. 542/1. Which places of themselfe all olde holy doctours confesse for diffuse and almost unexplicable.
1644. Digby, Nat. Soul, Pref. ¶ 5. Later Philosophers … haue filled their bookes … with vnexplicable opinions, out of which no account of nature can be given.
1656. Earl Monm., trans. Boccalini’s Advts. fr. Parnass., I. lxxvii. 100. Justice being oppressed by the unexplicable ambition of potent men.
1803. Ann. Rev., I. 275. What remains unexplicable in the conduct of public men is not solved by conjecture.
1815. Monthly Mag., XXXVIII. 111. Many hundred words obsolete, unexplicable, barbarous,… will be dislodged.
2. = INEXPLICABLE a. 1.
1615. G. Sandys, Trav., 225. Him Minos doomes To durance, in vnexplicable roomes.
a. 1624. R. Crakanthorpe, Vigilans Dormitans, xix. (1631), 313. [Popes] had by most admirable and unexplicable fraud & subtilty, clipt the wings and cut the sinewes of the Easterne Empire.
1675. Evelyn, Terra (1676), 61. Mould to entertain the Fibers, which else you will find to mat in unexplicable intanglements.
Hence † Unexplicableness. Obs.
1711. H. More’s App. Antid. Ath., 185. The unexplicableness of a Spirit’s moving Maker is no greater argument [etc.].
