unrecognizable
Britishadjective
Explanation
Anything that's unrecognizable can't be identified, often because it has changed so much. If your brother's Halloween costume is so elaborate that you can't even tell it's him under all that makeup, he's unrecognizable. This adjective is often used for things that have been badly damaged: "After the hurricane's destruction, the town was unrecognizable." You can also use it in a more positive way: "Once my bike was repaired and painted it was completely unrecognizable!" Unrecognizable comes from the prefix un-, or "not," and the Latin recognoscere, "recall to mind or know again."
Vocabulary lists containing unrecognizable
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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.
But now it’s so different from when it made its debut that it would be almost unrecognizable to its creators.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 3, 2026
What Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid is out to evoke is bone-deep submission: the kind of total capitulation and surrender that makes a person unrecognizable even to themselves.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 3, 2026
Liu was older, 7 inches taller, with bleached hair and piercings, practically unrecognizable from the wispy child she’d been at U.S. nationals in 2019.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026
Others wondered whether the song would be a radical reinvention that would render the original almost unrecognizable.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 20, 2026
The airport was unrecognizable from my last visit, completely overgrown with gorse and ivy and huge prehistoric-looking thistles.
From "How I Live Now" by Meg Rosoff
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.
