Index — Click the ᐅ to expand:
|
|
Ineffable
/ɪnˈɛfəbᵊl/ (n.)
Indescribable, usually on account of sheer wondrousness or cosmic scale. It doesn’t, literally, mean “incomprehensible” — but it sort of does, because not being able to articulate something is little different to being unable to understand it. I suppose one can’t describe the soaring beauty of Allegri’s Miserere, Beethoven’s Pathetique or Status Quo’s Piledriver — but is that because it is beyond comprehension of mortal mind?
Ineffability — the ability to do worthwhile things that no other mortal hand or eye can frame or, at any rate, weather the colossal tedium needed to frame them — is one of the twin pillars of a private practice lawyer’s ongoing profitability. She must deliver, over a prudent period of time, the kind of value that presents to the muggle world, incontrovertibly as value, whilst it not being at all clear in what exact way it is valuable. It needs just to be valuable, ineffably, in a way that cannot be reduced to its parts. For that which cannot be reduced cannot be outsourced, automated or programmatised.
It is also resistant to financialisation, so in the process of financialising, something is necessarily lost.
See also
