a. and sb. (UN-1 7 b.)
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., III. met. vii. (1886), 47. Liggeth thanne stille al owtrely vnknowable, ne fame ne maketh yow nat knowe.
1456. Sir G. Haye, Bk. Knighthood, Wks. (S.T.S.), II. 16. The quhilkis ar unknawable till … unworthy personis.
1653. H. More, Antid. Ath., I. iv. § 3. He is a very Novice in Speculation that does not acknowledge that to be unknowable.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iv. § 31. 471. There is something of God Vnknowable and Incomprehensible by all Mortals.
1740. Cheyne, Regimen, 35. If we dropt both substances, as unknown and unknowable Things at present.
1754. J. Edwards, Freed. Will, II. xii. 119. If there be any Truth which is absolutely without Evidence, that Truth is absolutely unknowable.
1818. F. Hall, Trav. Canada & U.S., 28. Indeed privacy … seems quite unknown, and unknowable to the Americans.
1873. Morley, Rousseau, II. 90. Men … will be thankful not to waste life in guessing evil about unknowable trifles.
b. absol. (with the). That which cannot be known. (Common from c. 1860.)
1823. Monthly Rev., CI. 447. Here, again, the author professes to know the unknowable.
1867. Lewes, Hist. Philos., I. p. cxv. We always hope that the Unknown is not also the Unknowable.
c. As sb. An unknowable thing.
1725. Watts, Logic, I. vi. § 1. To distinguish well between Knowables and Unknowables. Ibid. (1733), Philos. Ess., I. xii. In every Age … there will be some Unknowables and Insolvables.
1874. B. P. Browne, Philos. H. Spencer, ii. 41. Mr. Spencer’s argument proves an unexplainable, not an unknowable; for, though we cannot give the rationale of that final fact, by the supposition, we know it as a fact.
Hence Unknowableness.
1664. N. Ingelo, Bentiv. & Ur., II. VI. 367. The unknowableness of the manner of this Union.
1697. J. Sergeant, Solid Philos., 301. The Unknowableness of Real Essences.
1856. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., IV. 81. The great religious painters rejoiced in that kind of unknowableness.
1886. Jane Lee, Faust, p. xxxiii. The unknowableness of the nature of things.
