unprintable

English edit

unprintable (not comparable)

Not printable; obscene, or unable to be displayed textually.
- 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
  "There was poor old Wadley, of the Zoological Institute. Wadley sent a message: 'The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would do them the honor to come to their next meeting.' The answer was unprintable." "You don't say?" "Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run: 'Professor Challenger presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute, and would take it as a personal favor if he would go to the devil.'"
- 1949, Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Cheaper by the Dozen:
  Once a neighbor complained that a Gilbreth had called the neighbor's boy a son of an unprintable word.

not printable

unprintable (plural unprintables)

Something that is not printable.
- 2019, Richard Jennings, LabVIEW Graphical Programming, Fifth Edition, page 91:
  LabVIEW will interpret one- or two-character codes following the backslash character, as shown in Table 2.1. You can also enter unprintables by simply typing them into the string.