unpresentable, indecent: lacking proper form and so not fit to be shown openly
At its root the word is built from a term for "form" or "shape" with a prefix that cancels it, so it first means "without proper form": misshapen, and from there unseemly, indecent, or disgraceful. Its exact opposite is a word meaning "presentable, respectable" (εὐσχήμων). Greek culture tied the beautiful, the fitting, and the honorable tightly together, so the word slides easily from "ugly" to "improper" to "lacking status."
The adjective appears just once in the New Testament, at 1 Corinthians 12:23, where Paul calls certain body parts "unpresentable," a decorous way of naming the private parts, the ones we keep covered. His surprising point is that the body, and God who made it, give these very parts "greater honor" and extra modesty. So the word is not branding these parts as worthless in themselves; it names how they are treated, kept hidden, and then flips the expectation on its head.
For a Greek-speaking Jew the word carried an extra echo. In the Greek Old Testament the related noun (ἀσχημοσύνη) was the standard word for "nakedness" in the laws forbidding shameful exposure, so the whole family rang with forbidden nakedness and covenant shame, not mere bad manners.
Whether Paul endorses the conventional low evaluation of the "unpresentable" members or cites it in order to invert it.
- majorityPaul inverts the conventional social ranking, reworking the ancient body-politic fable so that the "weaker" and "unpresentable" members receive compensating honor, undercutting the status claims of the strong at Corinth.; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (Yale University Press, 1995); Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation (1991); Daniel Lynwood Smith, "Why Paul's Fabulous Body is Missing its Belly," JSNT 41.2 (2018): 143-160
- minorityThe status categories are taken closer to face value: some members really are weaker and less presentable, and Paul's point is that they still deserve care and honor.; David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (BECNT, 2003)