irrecoverable

Irrecoverable is an adjective meaning unable to be recovered or retrieved; not salvageable; beyond possibility of restoration. It can apply to physical objects, data, value, or outcomes.

The term is often used in finance to describe debts that are considered unlikely to be paid and are written off as bad debts; once classified as irrecoverable, they are removed from expected asset recoveries and may be charged to losses.

In computing and data management, irrecoverable refers to errors, data corruption, or data that cannot be restored from backups; an irrecoverable error prevents program continuation and may require restart or rollback.

In shipping or inventory contexts, irrecoverable losses describe items that cannot be recovered due to theft, destruction, or obsolescence. In legal or contractual language, irrecoverable costs or expenses are those that cannot be recovered from another party.

Irrecoverable differs from irreparable and irrevocable: irreparable describes damage that cannot be repaired, whereas irrecoverable concerns the inability to recover something already lost. Irrevocable describes actions or decisions that cannot be reversed, but does not necessarily imply loss of value or retrieval. Usage tends to be more common in financial or technical contexts, where a stated irrecoverable status has concrete implications for accounting, system state, or risk management.

Examples include: "The debt is irrecoverable and has been written off," "The system encountered an irrecoverable error," and "The cargo is deemed irrecoverable and will be discarded."