| / English Dictionary |
INCURABLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A person whose disease is incurable
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("incurable" is a kind of...):
diseased person; sick person; sufferer (a person suffering from an illness)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Unalterable in disposition or habits
Example:
an incurable optimist
Classified under:
Similar:
inalterable; unalterable (not capable of being changed or altered)
Derivation:
incurability (incapability of being altered in disposition or habits)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Incapable of being cured
Example:
an incurable addiction to smoking
Classified under:
Antonym:
curable (able to be cured or healed)
Derivation:
incurability; incurableness (incapability of being cured or healed)
Context examples:
The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Mitochondrial diseases are currently incurable, although a new IVF technique of mitochondrial transfer gives families affected by mitochondrial disease the chance of having healthy children – removing affected mitochondria from an egg or embryo and replacing them with healthy ones from a donor.
(Mitochondrial diseases could be treated with gene therapy, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
I was a fool when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
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