Human-verified examples from authoritative sources
Exact Expressions
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Putting them "beyond use" might seem like an irretrievable step.In this section Preach what you practise?
They regard joining the euro as overwhelmingly negative politically, since it involves an irretrievable loss of sovereignty.
The Republicans are so roiled by their internal battles about tea parties and the 10th amendment that they seem to be in irretrievable disarray, but these public disagreements are a necessary corrective to their past eight years of being pasted together in an uneasy coalition of social and economic conservatives.
It reflects a growing realisation that, unless Europe's leading military powers work closely together, the next decade will see an irretrievable shrinkage in their capability.There have been efforts to strike such deals in the past, notably the 1998 St Malo declaration, agreed by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac.
America, however, believes the Bank's money is all but irretrievable.
An Ipsos MORI poll published on July 20th showed the Tories down by a significant but hardly irretrievable five percentage points over the past month, with the prime minister's personal ratings also dented to the benefit of Mr Miliband.
When the grounding line retreats over the lip, water will flow into the depression and the ice will come free from the seabed like a plug lifting out of a basin, greatly speeding up the rate at which the glacier liquefies.Glaciologists use the word "collapse" to describe a shift towards an irretrievable loss of an ice sheet.
However, the public's confidence in Carter's executive abilities had fallen to an irretrievable low.
In regard to an attempt to recover the original text of a biblical passage especially an unintelligible one in the light of variants among different versions and manuscripts and known causes of corruption, it should be understood that all reconstruction must necessarily be conjectural and perforce tentative because of the irretrievable loss of the original edition.
There is always an irrational factor, disturbing, foreboding, not to be resolved by the sometime consolations of philosophy and religion or by any science of the mind or body; there is irretrievable loss, usually though not necessarily symbolized by the death of the hero.
It is, in short, perfectly at one in spirit with Venice itself, that sometime great empire which, when this painting was being made, was in a condition of irretrievable decline, and would finally fall to the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte about 40 years after the work was finished.
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The adjective "irretrievable" functions to describe something that cannot be recovered or restored . It's often used to emphasize the finality of a loss or the impossibility of retrieval, as Ludwig AI confirms. The examples illustrate its use in describing losses of sovereignty, data, and opportunities.
Expression frequency: Very common
