unaccountably

adverb

un·​ac·​count·​ably ˌən-ə-ˈkau̇n-tə-blē How to pronounce unaccountably (audio)
1
: in an unaccountable manner
looking unaccountably upset
heat was unaccountably disappearing
2
: for reasons that are hard to understand
unaccountably, he stayed right there

Examples of unaccountably in a Sentence

She was looking unaccountably upset. Unaccountably, the problem was ignored.
Recent Examples on the Web One of the finest private libraries of the age belonged to Vespasiano’s client Federico da Montefeltro, known for his spectacular palace in Urbino, and for having led an attack on the town of Volterra so unaccountably vicious that Machiavelli cited it as proof that men are inclined to evil. Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2024 Robert Shiller, a Nobel laureate in economics who teaches at Yale, wrote last week in The New York Times that wage-price spirals are a sort of Bigfoot, a mythical beast that the public, unaccountably, claims to have glimpsed at periodic intervals in history. Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 14 Feb. 2022 Welding the hilarious farce of the first to a sense of fierce outrage over the second was a risk Davis pulled off beautifully, as this season’s nigh-perfect revival, unaccountably its first on Broadway, demonstrated. Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times, 4 Dec. 2023 At this, Christie looked unaccountably pleased with himself. Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker, 28 Sep. 2023 To Warnock’s dismay, Acrobat was an unaccountably hard sell. Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 23 Aug. 2023 Furthermore, it’s now presented halfway through the plot and unaccountably staged, divorced from the action on a nearly bare stage as if at the climax of a Michael Ball concert. David Benedict, Variety, 26 May 2023 At the same time, Bazarov is unaccountably rude. Keith Gessen, The New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2022 As the New York Daily News put it, in typically breathless style: Khrushy’s burly security chief, Lt. Gen. Nikolai Zakharov, 6-foot-3, 220-pounder, became unaccountably irked with the way the city police were trying to squeeze his pudgy boss through the jampacked lobby. Simon Hall, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Sep. 2020

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unaccountably.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1687, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of unaccountably was in 1687

Dictionary Entries Near unaccountably

Cite this Entry

“Unaccountably.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unaccountably. Accessed 29 Mar. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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