stanchless

stanch +‎ -less

stanchless (comparative more stanchless, superlative most stanchless)

1. Incapable of being stanched or stopped.
   • 1594, Michael Drayton, Matilda, London: Nicholas Ling and John Busby,

     A stanchlesse hart, dead-wounded, euer bleeding,

     On whom that nere-fild vulture Loue sits feeding.

   • 1819, Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen, “Aspley Wood” Canto 2, stanza 26, in Aonian Hours and Other Poems, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 2nd edition, 1820, p. 82,

     We see, but cannot heal the stanchless wound,

     We share its gushing sorrow, still it bleeds;

   • 1856, Sydney Dobell, “Home, Wounded” in England in Time of War, London: Smith, Elder & Co., p. 105,

     And while I listed long,

     Day rose, and still he sang,

     And all his stanchless song,

     As something falling unaware,

     Fell out of the tall trees he sang among,

   • 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, New York: Viking, 1975, “Sutcliffe, the Venetian Documents,” p. 209,

     In his little red notebook the following random thoughts formed and were jotted down, like the slow interior overflow of a stanchless music.

2. (obsolete, figuratively) Incapable of being satisfied.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3,

     With this there grows

     In my most ill-composed affection such

     A stanchless avarice that, were I king,

     I should cut off the nobles for their lands,

   • 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, London: M. Lownes et al., Song 1, p. 9,

     This loosness to their spoyle the Troians did allure,

     Who fiercely them assail’d: where stanchlesse furie rap’t

     The Grecians in so fast, that scarcely one escap’t:

• (incapable of being stanched): unstaunchable
• (incapable of being satisfied): unquenchable, insatiable.

• snatchless