unassimilable

adjective

un·​as·​sim·​i·​la·​ble ˌən-ə-ˈsi-mə-lə-bəl How to pronounce unassimilable (audio)
: not able to be taken in or absorbed : not capable of being assimilated
… misfits … and revolutionaries deemed unassimilable by mainstream culture—James Traub
an unassimilable ideology
unassimilably
ˌən-ə-ˈsi-mə-lə-blē How to pronounce unassimilable (audio)
adverb

Examples of unassimilable in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
The ethnoburb is where Asian immigrants settled to be safe from whiteness, to build our own sense of home, and to stay unassimilable. — Bianca Mabute-Louie, ELLE, 9 Feb. 2023 Right until the moment his life was extinguished, his art was truculent, bold, arresting and unassimilable. — Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 21 Aug. 2019 The forming of us as alien beings, as diseased vermin, as engagers in practices that were disgusting and vile and unassimilable into the American mainstream. — Harmeet Kaur, CNN, 1 Mar. 2022 The project, like Rembrandt’s final self-portraits, had the thrilling gravity of work in which a mature artist brings his wealth of experience to bear on the unassimilable fact of mortality. — Rebecca Mead, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026 With no preparation beforehand or discussion after, the teenagers saw mounds of emaciated corpses being bulldozed into mass graves, and other unassimilable horrors. — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2021 The canonical work of Edward Curtis established the tragic view and elegiac rhetoric of Native people as noble savages unassimilable to Progress and hence destined for cultural, if not biological, extinction. — Literary Hub, 11 Sep. 2025 In the years after the Civil War, both Republicans and Democrats portrayed the Chinese arriving on the Pacific Coast as an invading horde, a heathen, unassimilable people. — Jeannie Suk Gersen, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1873, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of unassimilable was in 1873

Rhymes for unassimilable

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Browse Nearby Words

unassigned
unassimilable
unassimilated
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Unassimilable.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unassimilable. Accessed 7 Jul. 2026.

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