as in irreversible
not capable of being repaired, regained, or undone
irreparable damage to the car
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Recent Examples of irreparable
Joseph Hatley, an attorney representing Leavenworth, said the city succeeded in demonstrating that allowing CoreCivic to reopen without a permit would have caused irreparable harm.
—
Matthew Kelly, Kansas City Star, 11 Feb. 2026
Rattling off the potential for irreparable harm, the attorney said that demobilizing the project and then restarting it would significantly delay the overall timeline of the critical infrastructure project, or even torpedo the whole thing.
—Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News, 6 Feb. 2026
Difficulty working through conflict with those close to us can cause irreparable harm to families and relationships.
—Richard Balkin, The Conversation, 26 Jan. 2026
The reputational loss that the United States has suffered is consequential, and possibly irreparable in the next decade or so.
—Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, 23 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for irreparable
Matthew Kelly, Kansas City Star, 11 Feb. 2026
Rattling off the potential for irreparable harm, the attorney said that demobilizing the project and then restarting it would significantly delay the overall timeline of the critical infrastructure project, or even torpedo the whole thing.
—Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News, 6 Feb. 2026
Difficulty working through conflict with those close to us can cause irreparable harm to families and relationships.
—Richard Balkin, The Conversation, 26 Jan. 2026
The reputational loss that the United States has suffered is consequential, and possibly irreparable in the next decade or so.
—Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, 23 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for irreparable
Recent Examples of Synonyms for irreparable
Adjective
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Cohen treats workers who breathed in high amounts of this material in the mines for decades, causing irreversible damage.—
Meghan Schiller,
CBS News,
3 Mar. 2026
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Polio can attack the nervous system and can lead to irreversible paralysis and occasionally death due to respiratory failure.—
Alexis Wilkinson,
New Yorker,
2 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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Many of the country’s top psychiatric groups warn that there is no empirical standard for determining whether a mental-health condition is irremediable.—
Elizabeth Bruenig,
The Atlantic,
4 Feb. 2026
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The cases in Blair’s book, however gruesome, catalogue methods that our species has used to manage terror, sorrow, and disbelief in the face of the irremediable and unpredictable arrival of death.—
Rivka Galchen,
New Yorker,
7 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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This dreamscape of the island, like that of the jungle, illuminates in children’s literature a sense of utopia and longing about childhood as a not-quite-place, situated in an irretrievable past-yet-future, while at the same time rooted in an anti-utopian logic of adulthood.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
17 Nov. 2025
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Alcaraz broke the Italian twice, winning the set with an incredible backhand flick from what looked like an irretrievable position and cupping his ear.—
Tim Ellis,
Forbes.com,
13 July 2025
Cite this Entry
“Irreparable.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/irreparable. Accessed 7 Mar. 2026.
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