untranslatable
Americanadjective
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.
People who speak English alongside other languages fill lexical gaps by "borrowing the untranslatable word from another language".
From BBC ● Mar. 27, 2025
I think there’s a kind of quiet beauty in leaving some things untranslatable, and just sitting beside someone with very different value systems and understanding, “This is what gives you joy.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 26, 2023
The pain that connects Rama and Laurence is like a secret language, an untranslatable grammar of alienation and loss.
From New York Times ● Jan. 12, 2023
Writing in English, Spanish and Nahuatl, Vértiz honors and relishes the feeling of being untranslatable.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 17, 2019
Their crowns entwined and crisscrossed and whispered with rain, and bowed and shifted as troops of monkeys passed through them like currents of wind, leaping from crown to crown, crying their untranslatable cries.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
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.
