Does "unbearable" always have a negative connotation?

Question

I came across with this sentence> "As a child he held an unbearable curiosity, he needed to question everything"Since english is not my first language, I was giving it a second thought and trying to understand if the word "unbearable" was used correctly. By this, what I mean to say is that "unbearable" seems to me as a negative word (unbearable pain, torture, and so on...) . However, the fact that "he needed to question everything" could be an awesome feature of his personality.From journalism to engineering, curiosity is definitely a good thing, something desirable. I believe that there's some passionate feeling involved in the use of the word to enforce the feeling towards questioning.I looked for unbearable in the dictionary and of course give me the "not bearble" definition. Going to the "to bear" definition, it leaves the door open for a slightly more possitive meaning. **Does "unbearable" hold any ambivalent meaning or I should assume that every time would mean something negative?** In the former case I should try to get it from the context (or maybe there's a related word that fits better and is used more often to avoid confussion). In the latter case, perhaps the mother of this child had had enough, given the amount of questions, and "unbearable" was correctly used.

Answer 1

Generally, "unbearable" is indeed used in negative contexts. You hit on it with your point about "to bear", because if you can't bear something (you can't manage it), it's probably going to be a bad thing. If you look at synonyms, you'll find words like insufferable and intolerable, which clearly have negative implications. If you're looking to convey the scale of something like curiosity, you can use words that more directly mean that, such as "considerable". For example, "As a child he had a considerable amount of curiosity..."

The way you've currently written the sentence would indeed imply that the mother was frustrated with the child's curiosity.