intelligibility
Americannoun
-
the quality or condition of being intelligible; capability of being understood.
-
something intelligible.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of intelligibility
First recorded in 1600–10; intelligible + -ity
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“They didn’t share his optimism that physics will be able to actually produce any theory of intelligibility and consciousness which is responsible for the physical picture of the world.”
From Salon ● Jan. 17, 2025
I appreciated its intelligibility and, from where I stood, its edge.
From New York Times ● Oct. 5, 2021
But like most palindromes, Tenet prizes reversibility over intelligibility: The point of “Able was I ere I saw Elba” is that it reads the same both ways, not that it teaches you anything.
From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2020
The book still needs what Harriet, as a child, called “footmarks”—not to present incidentally interesting facts but, rather, to provide a basic intelligibility.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 9, 2019
For those, on the other hand, who believe in the influence of discarnate spirits, this scheme affords a path of transition, and as it were a provisional intelligibility.
From Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death by Myers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
