Adjective

(head)

Not redeemable; not able to be restored, recovered, revoked, or escaped.

* 1908 , :

It wavered an instant—then there was a heartrending crash—and the canary-coloured cart, their pride and their joy, lay on its side in the ditch, an irredeemable wreck.

* 1909 , , True Tilda , ch. 2:

She was horribly frightened; but she had pledged her word now, and it was irredeemable .

Not able to be cancelled by a payment or converted to another form of currency or financial instrument, especially one considered more secure or reliable.

* 1776 , , The Wealth of Nations , ch. 3:

The subscribers to a new loan, who mean generally to sell their subscription as soon as possible, prefer greatly a perpetual annuity, redeemable by parliament, to an irredeemable annuity, for a long term of years, of only equal amount.

* 2005 Oct. 31, James Grant, " O Sage! O Confidence Man!," Forbes (retrieved 17 Aug 2010):

Investors have always had to trust somebody or something. . . . But they have not always had to make a leap of faith about a nation's irredeemable paper currency. Up until Aug. 15, 1971 the dollar was exchangeable into gold at the rate of $35 to the ounce.

Adjective

(en adjective)

That cannot be reformed.

*{{quote-news, year=2007, date=September 30, author=Orlando Patterson, title=Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America, work=New York Times citation

, passage=The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face — the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children’s care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods — all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle. }}