Impossibility

/ɪmˌpɒsɪˈbɪliti/ · noun

Meaning

Something that is impossible..

Definitions by Sense

1. Something that is impossible.
2. (uncountable) The quality of being impossible.
3. (obsolete) The state of being unable to do something.

Example Sentences

Meeting the deadline is an impossibility; there is no way we can be ready in time.

God commands not impossibilities; and all the Ecclesiastical glue, that Liturgy, or Laymen can compound, is not able to soder up two such incongruous natures into the one flesh of a true beseeming Mariage.

My dear Tom, you are going to undertake an Impossibility. If you knew my Father, you would never think of obtaining his Consent.

The ancient teachers of this science […] promised impossibilities, and performed nothing.

Breathing had become difficult, swallowing acutely painful, and sleep an impossibility—for whenever he dropped off, the patient would choke and wake up frantically struggling for air.

And what actinic, mind-wrenching form could the countermeme take? How could human hands assemble something so devastatingly powerful and hold it steady; what human mind could wield it without exploding from the inside out? What would deploying that concept in anger do to human ideatic space? How far out from the solution is modern memetic science, a year, a century? What insane impossibility has Hughes just committed himself to?

1548, Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke, London: Richard Grafton, Henry VIII, year 15, After long reasonyng, there wer certain appoynted, to declare the impossibilite of this demaunde to the Cardinal,

[L]et the mutinous winds / Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun; / Murdering impossibility, to make / What cannot be, slight work.

Synonyms for impossibility

Antonyms for impossibility

Related Words

Word Forms

• impossibilities

Usage Notes

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