invisible

in-VIZ-uh-bul/ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/

8 meanings of invisible

1
adjective
Unable to be seen; out of sight or otherwise not visible.
Carbon monoxide is invisible and odorless, which makes it especially dangerous.
From the valley floor, the summit remained invisible behind thick clouds.
Similarunseen, hidden, imperceptible, undetectable, obscured
Oppositevisible, apparent
Note
A borrowing that pushed out a native word: Middle English took invisible from Old French and Late Latin invīsibilis, and it displaced Old English ungesewenlīc. It takes to for the one who cannot see, as in Milton's "To us invisible or dimly seen" in Paradise Lost (1667). That frame lets it stretch beyond sight. William E. Conner's "An Acoustic Arms Race" (American Scientist, 2013) has moths "invisible" to echolocating bats.
2
adjective
Not appearing on the surface; present but hidden from outward view.
Years of water damage remained invisible beneath the fresh paint.
Much of a translator's skill is invisible to readers, who see only the finished prose.
Similarhidden, latent
Oppositevisible, apparent, obvious, evident
3
adjective
Ignored or overlooked by a person, as if not seen or not present at all.
After the merger, longtime staff felt invisible to the new management.
Some customers treat waiters as if they were completely invisible.
Similarunnoticed, overlooked, unseen, unacknowledged
Oppositerecognized, acknowledged
Note
Psychology's use moves the failure from the eye to attention. The person is in plain view and simply goes unregistered or unacknowledged. It usually takes to plus whoever does the ignoring, as in invisible to management or invisible to her own family. It describes how someone is treated, not how they look. The verb to make invisible names the process that produces this state.
4
adjective
Appearing to be offline on a messaging service or platform while actually online and connected.
He set his status to invisible and quietly read the group chat.
Even though she appeared offline, she was just invisible and saw every message.
Similarhidden
Oppositevisible, online
Note
A messaging-platform setting rather than a fact about sight: contacts see you as offline while you are in fact still connected. The usual verb is go, as in "I went invisible so that my ex-girlfriend wouldn't send me instant messages." You can also set your status to invisible. The point is selective concealment, not absence, which is what separates it from simply logging off.
5
verbtransitive
To make invisible; to cause someone or something to go unseen or unnoticed.
Glossy tourism brochures invisible the city's poorer neighborhoods.
The official history invisibled the laborers who built the railway.
Similarerase, obscure, hide, conceal, marginalize
Oppositereveal, highlight
Note
Here the "unseen" adjective is pressed into service as a verb with no suffix added, inflecting regularly as invisibles, invisibled, invisibling. It names a social process rather than a vanishing act: Rachael Davenhill's Looking into Later Life (2007) writes of the "invisibling" of people in later life, still in scare quotes. Invisiblize does the same work with an explicit verb-making ending. The bare form is the more striking choice.

Less common meanings

6
nounobsolete
A person or thing that cannot be seen; specifically, God, the Supreme Being.
She prayed nightly to the Invisible for her son's safe return from the sea.
The sermon urged the congregation to fear the Invisible more than any earthly king.
Note
Obsolete now, the noun once named God by the one quality no creature shares with him. It belongs to older devotional and theological prose, and a modern reader meets it there rather than in current use. Today the same idea is carried by the plain "unseen" meaning of the adjective, placed beside a noun, rather than by the adjective standing alone as a name.
7
nounobsolete
A Rosicrucian; so called because members of the order avoided revealing their affiliation with it.
Rumor held that an invisible lived among the apothecaries, working cures by hidden arts.
The pamphlet warned that thirty-six invisibles had arrived in Paris to spread their secret philosophy.
Note
A nickname that turns secrecy into a label: Rosicrucians were called invisibles because they would not declare their craft. Like the noun for God, it is obsolete. It survives mainly in accounts of the rumors of the 1620s, when the brotherhood was said to move through European cities undetected. Use it today only in historical writing, and expect to explain it.
8
nounobsolete
One of those, especially in the 16th century, who denied that the church is a visible institution, holding instead that the true church cannot be seen.
As an invisible, he taught that no council or cathedral could contain the true church.
Invisibles. Heretics who denied the visibility of the Church
1872, Orby Shipley, A Glossary of Ecclesiastical Terms
Note
A label from Reformation controversy, and a hostile one. Orby Shipley's A Glossary of Ecclesiastical Terms (1872) lists the Invisibles as heretics who denied the visibility of the church. The dispute turned on whether the true church is an institution you can point to or an unseen communion of believers. The plural invisibles shares its spelling with the present tense of the verb "to make invisible".

Practice

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Origin

This word came through Middle English and Old French from Late Latin 'invīsibilis'. It is formed from 'in-' plus 'visible', and it replaced the native Old English word 'unġesewenlīċ'.