All 3 Uses of
communicable
in
Moby Dick
- Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.†
Chpt 7-9incommunicable = not capable of being transmitted by infectionstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incommunicable means not and reverses the meaning of communicable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapour—as you will sometimes see it—glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts.†
Chpt 85-87
- Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief.†
Chpt 118-120 *
Definitions:
-
(1)
(communicable as in: a communicable disease) of disease: contagious or infectious
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, communicable can mean easily communicated; or capable of being communicated.