1
as in mysterious
being beyond one's powers to know, understand, or explain
the many inscrutable beliefs of that ancient religion
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in ambiguous
having an often intentionally veiled or uncertain meaning
ancient oracles typically uttered inscrutable prophecies that could be interpreted almost any way one chose
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Recent Examples of inscrutable
According to Know Your Meme, the term vagueposting started with vaguebooking, a description for a purposefully inscrutable Facebook update that encourages friends to check in.
—
Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 11 Jan. 2026
Cameron Winter’s lyrics have an air of inscrutable mysticism, but there is little doubt he’s supposed to be the one singing them.
—Armin Rosen, The Washington Examiner, 9 Jan. 2026
What hurts most is that there’s no single performance here as challenging and complex as what Florence Pugh was doing in Lady Macbeth or what Thomasin McKenzie delivered in Eileen — performances that demand focus and interpretation, conjuring the inscrutable within the familiar.
—Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 8 Jan. 2026
But all actions have consequences—even arbitrary and inscrutable ones.
—Idrees Kahloon, The Atlantic, 3 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for inscrutable
Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 11 Jan. 2026
Cameron Winter’s lyrics have an air of inscrutable mysticism, but there is little doubt he’s supposed to be the one singing them.
—Armin Rosen, The Washington Examiner, 9 Jan. 2026
What hurts most is that there’s no single performance here as challenging and complex as what Florence Pugh was doing in Lady Macbeth or what Thomasin McKenzie delivered in Eileen — performances that demand focus and interpretation, conjuring the inscrutable within the familiar.
—Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 8 Jan. 2026
But all actions have consequences—even arbitrary and inscrutable ones.
—Idrees Kahloon, The Atlantic, 3 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for inscrutable
Recent Examples of Synonyms for inscrutable
Adjective
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The other is a smaller, more mysterious handheld chunk of willow or poplar wood that may have been used to shape stone tools, according to research published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.—
Adithi Ramakrishnan,
Los Angeles Times,
27 Jan. 2026
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But when a mysterious woman opens The Grand Lisbon restaurant, his glittering world begins to fracture, exposing the fragile balance between success, memory, and longing.—
Max Goldbart,
Deadline,
27 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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When institutions offer ambiguous framing, populists provide clarity.—
Güney Yıldız,
Forbes.com,
24 Jan. 2026
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This ambiguous legacy as both enslaver and emancipator has troubled Americans ever since.—
John Garrison Marks,
Time,
23 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Disco, Occasionally, the British superstar’s fourth studio album that’s been teased via a creeping, ongoing rollout with cryptic posters, a WhatsApp chat, listening sessions in indie record shops and a series of city residencies in place of a sprawling global tour.—
Jeff Benjamin,
Forbes.com,
23 Jan. 2026
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The announcement of a new tour and album comes weeks after Styles teased devotees with posters, videos, a cryptic website and an intriguing song snippet starting in late December.—
Melissa Ruggieri,
USA Today,
22 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Malcolm’s subjects are very old-school, doctrinaire, rigid Freudian psychoanalysts who get involved in impossibly obscure academic debates.—
The New Yorker,
New Yorker,
28 Jan. 2026
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But then last January, an obscure AI startup named DeepSeek released a generative AI platform, R1, which was comparable to ChatGPT but purporting to use just a fraction of Nvidia’s bleeding-edge chips.—
Charlie Campbell,
Time,
27 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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The biological mother, an enigmatic teenage employee of the bar, has vanished.—
Chloe Schama,
Vogue,
24 Jan. 2026
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Oracles are by their nature enigmatic, obscure, gnomic, a mode that the aleatory perambulations of the Eureka engine would seem predisposed toward producing, but narrative also has a venerable tradition of being mechanically generated, despite the seeming complexity of plot.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
21 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
Jim is the only one standing still, staring straight at the camera with his intense, dark-blue eyes.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
28 Jan. 2026
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Small described the shooter as a male who was wearing dark clothing and black and white shoes.—
Tom Ignudo,
CBS News,
28 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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In the work, traditional folklore and marvelous, uncanny incidents are often the sites of resistance against colonialism or enslavement.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
28 Jan. 2026
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The Boy Who Knew Too Much tells the true story of a young boy named Christian Haupt, who, from a very young age, displays an uncanny knowledge of baseball and vivid memories of a past life as Lou Gehrig, the famous Yankee.—
Nellie Andreeva,
Deadline,
27 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Although Nuccio is as down to earth as anyone could be, and definitely not a mystic, there can be no disputing his stature as a remarkable man.—
Joshua Siskin,
Oc Register,
8 Jan. 2026
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Madonna was born and raised Catholic but has long practiced the Jewish mystic tradition of Kabbalah and adopted the Hebrew name Esther in 2004, per The Forward.—
Sophie Dodd,
PEOPLE,
21 Dec. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Inscrutable.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/inscrutable. Accessed 30 Jan. 2026.
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