English

Adjective

insufferable ‎(comparative more insufferable, superlative most insufferable)

1. Not sufferable; very difficult or impossible to endure.

1. • 1749, John Cleland, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Part 3

     kept up by the pain I had endur'd in the course of the engagement, from the insufferable size of his weapon, tho' it was not as yet in above half its length.

   • c. 1795, Jane Austen, Lady Susan, ch. 22:

     This is insufferable! My dearest friend, I was never so enraged before,and must relieve myself by writing to you. . . . Guess my astonishment, and vexation.

   • 1894, Henry James, The Coxon Fund, ch. 4:

     Saltram was incapable of keeping the engagements which, after their separation, he had entered into with regard to his wife, a deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite irreproachable and insufferable person.

   • 1913, Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country, ch. 13:

     Marvell . . . thought Peter a bore in society and an insufferable nuisance on closer terms.

   • 2011 June 7, "Chaos in Syria," Time:

     The oppressive heat has become insufferable in Syria — and as the temperature climbs, emotions get harder to contain.

Synonyms

• intolerable, unbearable

Related terms

• insufferableness
• insufferably

Translations

References

• insufferable at OneLook Dictionary Search