Wiktionary

insufferable

English

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WOTD – 5 July 2022

Etymology

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PIE word
*upó

From Late Middle English insufferable (“unbearably painful, intolerable”),[1] and then either:

From Old French souffrable, suffrable are derived from Medieval Latin sufferābilis, from Latin sufferre[5] + -ābilis (suffix meaning ‘able or worthy to be’); while sufferre is the present active infinitive of sufferō, subferō (“to bear or carry under; to bear, endure, suffer, undergo”), from sub- (prefix meaning ‘below, under’) + ferō (“to bear, carry; to endure, suffer, tolerate”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“to bear, carry”)). The English word is analysable as in- (prefix meaning ‘not’) +‎ sufferable.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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insufferable (comparative more insufferable, superlative most insufferable)

  1. Not sufferable; very difficult or impossible to endure; intolerable, unbearable.
    Synonyms: insupportable, unabideable, unendurable, (archaic or obsolete) unsufferable, unsupportable
    Antonyms: abideable, bearable, endurable, sufferable, supportable, tolerable

Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “insufferāble, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ “in-, pref.(2)”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  3. ^ “sufferāble, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  4. ^ “insufferable, adj.”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2019; “insufferable, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  5. ^ “sufferable, adj.”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2021; “sufferable, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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