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INEXPLICABLE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Incapable of being explained or accounted for
Example:
left the house at three in the morning for inexplicable reasons
Synonyms:
incomprehensible; inexplicable
Classified under:
Similar:
cryptic; cryptical; deep; inscrutable; mysterious; mystifying (of an obscure nature)
paradoxical; self-contradictory (seemingly contradictory but nonetheless possibly true)
unaccountable; unexplainable (not to be accounted for or explained)
unexplained (having the reason or cause not made clear)
Also:
incomprehensible; uncomprehensible (difficult to understand)
insoluble (admitting of no solution or explanation)
Antonym:
explicable (capable of being explicated or accounted for)
Context examples:
Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, found that some patients’ seemingly inexplicable anaphylaxis was actually caused by an uncommon allergy to a molecule found naturally in red meat.
(NIAID scientists link cases of unexplained anaphylaxis to red meat allergy, National Institutes of Health)
That a man of the world, five-and-forty years of age, shrewd, honest, and acquainted with Courts, should be beguiled by such crude and coarse homage, amazed me, as it did all who knew him; but you who have seen much of life do not need to be told how often the strongest and noblest nature has its one inexplicable weakness, showing up the more obviously in contrast to the rest, as the dark stain looks the fouler upon the whitest sheet.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But I apprehend that we were personally fortunate in engaging a servant with a taste for cordials, who swelled our running account for porter at the public-house by such inexplicable items as quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.); Half-quartern gin and cloves (Mrs. C.); Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)—the parentheses always referring to Dora, who was supposed, it appeared on explanation, to have imbibed the whole of these refreshments.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There lies the inexplicable part of it.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Accustomed as I was to Holmes’s curious faculties, this sudden intrusion into my most intimate thoughts was utterly inexplicable.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The case has been an interesting one, remarked Holmes when our visitors had left us, because it serves to show very clearly how simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight seems to be almost inexplicable.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Add to this double apprehension the mystery that still hung over the behaviour of my friends, their unexplained desertion of the stockade, their inexplicable cession of the chart, or harder still to understand, the doctor's last warning to Silver, Look out for squalls when you find it, and you will readily believe how little taste I found in my breakfast and with how uneasy a heart I set forth behind my captors on the quest for treasure.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
