impossibility

English

Etymology

From Middle French impossibilité, from Latin impossibilitās.

Noun

impossibility (countable and uncountable, plural impossibilities)

  1. Something that is impossible.
    Meeting the deadline is an impossibility; there is no way we can be ready in time.
  2. (uncountable) The quality of being impossible.
    • South
      They confound difficulty with impossibility.
    • 1749, John Cleland, “part 2”, in Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, London: G. Fenton, OCLC 13050889:
      ...he threw himself upon her, and his back being now towards me, I could only take his being ingulph'd for granted, by the directions he mov'd in, and the impossibility of missing so staring a mark...
  3. (obsolete) Inability; helplessness.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Latimer to this entry?)

Antonyms

Translations

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