Incorrigible
adj, noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 An incorrigibly bad individual.
"The incorrigibles in the prison population are either lifers or habitual reoffenders."
- 1 Defective and impossible to materially correct or set aright. not-comparable
"The construction flaw is incorrigible; any attempt to amend it would cause a complete collapse."
- 2 Unmanageable; impervious to correction by punishment or pain. not-comparable
"an incorrigible youth"
- 3 Incurably depraved; not reformable. not-comparable
"His dark soul was too incorrigible to repent, even at his execution."
- 4 Unchangeably established in a belief or habit. not-comparable
"Gordon Brown may have his grumpy, Granita moments, but as a strategist he is an incorrigible optimist."
- 5 Intrinsically incapable of being corrected; impossible to disprove, by its very nature. not-comparable
"The statement "My knee hurts" is incorrigible."
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- 6 Impossible to cure. archaic, not-comparable
"It may appear as an epidemic, as a hereditary complaint, or as an obstinate and incorrigible disease again and again recurring."
- 1 impervious to correction by punishment wordnet
- 2 difficult or impossible to manage or control wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"You are difficult and incorrigible."
Etymology
From Middle English incorrigible, from Middle French incorrigible (1334), or directly from Latin incorrigibilis (“not to be corrected”), from in- (“not”) + corrigere (“to correct”) + -ibilis (“-able”), equivalent to in- + corrigible. Recorded since 1340.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.