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Inscrutable

(pronounced in-skroo-tuh-bul)  adjective

Definition

incapable of being understood; difficult to fathom or interpret; not readily investigated; mysterious.

Main Example

• Back for a moment to the main example for "Farcical" featured in this edition: How could a presidential inauguration speech be so incoherent and inscrutable? The answer may lie in the credentials of the speaker, Warren Harding, regarded by historians to be our most incompetent president ever. Author Malcolm Gladwell calls Harding a "moron" who got elected to the high office largely because he was stunningly handsome and had for a political advisor someone with the combined skills of Carl Rove and James Carville.

Workplace Examples

• The problem with this brochure is the language. It's so full of jargon and big, obscure words that most people will find it to be a little too inscrutable and simply trash it.
• I wonder what Leah thinks of our plan. Throughout my presentation, she wore her usual inscrutable expression which I have never been able to interpret.

Other Examples

• a colleague with an inscrutable smile; the inscrutable face of the Egyptian Sphinx; the inscrutable inscriptions on ancient Indus Valley seals which archaeologists are still trying to decipher
• somebody who had been living in severe poverty and then suddenly won the lottery exclaiming: "God sure has his inscrutable ways."
• during his periodic testimony to Congress, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan deliberately answering some of the questions inscrutably so as to not tip his hand and create a sensation in the financial markets
• the message in a new TV commercial being lost on most viewers because it is so subtle as to be inscrutable
• one reason why investors didn't learn of Enron's true financial picture in the years directly preceding its collapse: the inscrutability of its financial statements

© 2005 V.J. Singal

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