Unscannable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Not able to be read or examined by scanning devices or methods; resistant to digital capture or mechanical analysis; incapable of being interpreted through scanning technology
2. Impossible to convert to digital form via scanning; unable to be decoded or processed by optical scanners; not readable by automated scanning tools
3. Incapable of being captured or understood by scanning equipment; unreadable through technological means designed to scan; not accessible to scanning for information extraction

Etymology: Unscannable is a plain combination: the prefix "un-" (meaning "not") attached to "scannable," so it means "impossible to scan." The "un-" traces back through Old English and Proto-Germanic to a very old negating element shared across the Germanic languages, and it has been productive in English for over a thousand years. The more interesting thread runs through "scan." It comes from Latin "scandere," meaning "to climb," which is also the source of "ascend" and "descend." Latin poets used the word for the metrical measurement of verse, marking out the rhythmic beats of a line, and that technical sense passed through Middle English "scannen" into modern English. "Scan" therefore began with physical climbing and ended up describing the careful counting of syllables in a poem. "Scannable" joins that verb to the suffix "-able," which in English means "capable of being," and "unscannable" flips it to "incapable of being" scanned. The suffix itself came through Old French from Latin "-abilis," so the whole word combines a Germanic prefix with a Latin verb and a Latin-derived ending.

Synonyms: illegible, unreadable, incomprehensible, undecipherable

Antonyms: scannable, readable, legible, decipherable