Nonregistrable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Not capable of being officially recorded or entered on a register due to failure to meet required criteria or legal standards
2. Incapable of formal registration or logging in an official list because it does not comply with established rules or conditions
3. Unable to be documented or recognized within a registry owing to ineligibility or lack of necessary qualifications

Etymology: "Nonregistrable" is about as plain as English coinages get: the prefix "non-" attached to "registrable," meaning something that can be entered on an official record or list. Put together, it describes a thing that cannot be registered, whether that is a trademark, a name, a document, or a motor vehicle that fails to qualify for listing. The root is "register," which traces back through Anglo-Norman and Old French to Medieval Latin "registrum," a record book, itself a shortening of "regestum," something recorded. The suffix "-able" (from Latin "-abilis") turns the verb into an adjective meaning capable of being done, so "registrable" means capable of being registered. The prefix "non-" simply reverses that sense, a productive pattern in English that has produced countless negative adjectives such as "nonfatal" and "noncommercial."

Synonyms: unregisterable, unrecordable, unfileable

Antonyms: registrable, recordable, fileable