unreadable

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ readable.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Adjective

unreadable (comparative more unreadable, superlative most unreadable)

1. Not written clearly enough to be deciphered.

   Synonyms: illegible, indecipherable, unclear

   unreadable handwriting

   a machine that cut up secret documents into small unreadable fragments

   unreadable charts

   • 2020, Stewart Arneil, “Encoding Disappearing Characters: The Case of Twentieth-Century Japanese-Canadian Names”, in Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative‎^[1], number 12, Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, →DOI, →ISSN:

     Although the kyūjitai kanji were not banned, the obsolete kyūjitai kanji have become unreadable to more and more readers over time, thus making texts including them difficult for modern readers, but at least there is a recognized mapping from new form to old form.

2. Making an unpleasant reading experience, e.g. because it is dull or upsetting.

   an unreadable book

   unreadable rants

3. Not able to be accessed or played by some technical device.

   The scratched CD is unreadable.

Antonyms

• readable

Derived terms

• unreadability
• unreadableness

 

Translations

that cannot be deciphered

• Bulgarian: неразбираем (bg) (nerazbiraem), нечетлив (bg) (nečetliv)
• Dutch: onleesbaar (nl), onleesbare (nl)
• Finnish: lukukelvoton, mahdoton lukea
• French: illisible (fr) m or f
• German: unleserlich (de), unlesbar (de)
• Greek: δυσανάγνωστος (el) (dysanágnostos)
• Hungarian: olvashatatlan (hu), kivehetetlen (hu)
• Italian: illeggibile (it)
• Polish: nieczytelny (pl) m
• Russian: неприго́дный для чте́ния m (neprigódnyj dlja čténija), нечита́бельный (ru) m (nečitábelʹnyj)
• Spanish: ilegible (es)
• Swedish: oläslig (sv), oläsbar (sv)

making an unpleasant reading experience

• Bulgarian: безинтересен (bg) (bezinteresen)
• French: illisible (fr)
• Hungarian: unalmas (hu), érdektelen (hu), nem olvasmányos
• Italian: illeggibile (it)
• Russian: нечита́бельный (ru) m (nečitábelʹnyj), неприго́дный для чте́ния m (neprigódnyj dlja čténija),
• Swedish: oläsbar (sv), oläslig (sv)