unintelligibility
Meaning
The quality or state of being impossible to understand.
Structure
Usage
The poor audio quality resulted in the complete unintelligibility of the lecture.
Critics pointed out the unintelligibility of the legal document's jargon-filled prose.
The unintelligibility of his handwriting made the note useless.
Etymology
The word 'unintelligibility' is built upon the core Latin concept of understanding, intelligere, which itself is a compound of inter- (between) and legere (to gather, choose, read). The suffix -ibility was attached in Latin to form abstract nouns denoting a state of capacity. The Germanic negative prefix un- was later prefixed in English to reverse the meaning. Thus, the literal construction "not + capable of being understood" evolved into the modern abstract noun describing the quality of incomprehensibility, charting a journey from the concrete act of gathering meaning between things to the formal state of its impossibility.
Analysis
un: A prefix of Germanic origin, via Old English, meaning "not." It functions as a negator. intellig: A root derived from the Latin verb intelligere, meaning "to understand, comprehend." ibility: A suffix complex from Latin -ibilitas, combining -ibilis (capable of being) and -itas (state, condition). It forms nouns indicating a state or quality.