invaluable

From in- +‎ valuable (compare priceless).

• IPA^(key): /ɪnˈvælju(ə)bl̩/, /ɪnˈvæljəbl̩/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: in‧val‧u‧ab‧le

invaluable (comparative more invaluable, superlative most invaluable)

2. Having great or incalculable value.

   Synonyms: priceless, inestimable, valuable

   Hypernyms: valuable, precious, crucial

   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice:

     You are a very strange creature by way of a friend!—always wanting me to play and sing before anybody and everybody! If my vanity had taken a musical turn, you would have been invaluable; but as it is, I would really rather not sit down before those who must be in the habit of hearing the very best performers.

   • 1961, Joseph Heller, Catch-22, page 181:

     Colonel Cathcart bewailed the miserable fate that had given him for an invaluable assistant someone as common as Colonel Korn. It was degrading to have to to depend so thoroughly on a person who had been educated at a state university.

4. (obsolete) Not valuable; valueless; worthless.

   Synonyms: unvaluable, nonvaluable

   • 1640, Treaty of Ripon:

     The money I have received is so invaluable a sum that I have forborne as yet to pay it in, and am heartily sorry that I cannot better advance His Majesty's service.

   • 1866, Thomas Wright, The Intellectual Observer:

     It would be an interesting, and far from an invaluable labour, to trace the history of the murrains, or cattle diseases of former days, and there causes and effects.

• invaluably
• invaluableness

in- +‎ valer +‎ -able

• IPA^(key): /imbaˈlwable/ [ĩm.baˈlwa.β̞le]
• Rhymes: -able
• Syllabification: in‧va‧lua‧ble

invaluable m or f (masculine and feminine plural invaluables)

1. invaluable, priceless

   Synonym: invalorable

• “invaluable”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024