impossible
Noun pluralimpossibles
Pluralimpossibles
- 1That cannot happen or cannot be done in any way.
Reaching the summit before nightfall was impossible given the weather.
She found it impossible to finish the report in a single day.
UsageOften it is impossible to do something, find it impossible to, or make something impossible. It can be softened with almost or nearly.
Similarunachievable, unattainable, impracticable, unfeasible, hopeless
Oppositepossible, feasible, achievable, attainable
Note
It favors a few frames. One is impossible to do. Another is make something impossible, as in John F. Kennedy's 1962 warning that those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. A third is the older impossible that … should, used in The Annual Register of 1787.
- 2Very difficult to deal with.
She became impossible the moment anyone questioned her plans.
Their toddler was impossible during the long flight home.
UsageMostly said of people: you're impossible! It can also describe conditions: this humidity is impossible.
Similarunbearable, intolerable, insufferable, unmanageable, difficult
Oppositeeasygoing, reasonable, manageable, agreeable
Note
Hyperbole hardened into a sense: the speaker does not mean that someone cannot exist, only that they cannot be borne. Unlike the literal meaning, it grades freely: a more impossible child, the most impossible boss.
- 3A thing that cannot be done or that cannot happen.
Engineers were asked to accomplish the impossible within a month.
She refused to accept the impossible and kept searching for a way.
UsageUsually the impossible: do the impossible, ask for the impossible.
Note
It is also countable, with a plural, impossibles, naming particular things that cannot be done. J. H. Jowett wrote in 1911 that the church lives for impossibles, and a speaker in Jean Kate Ludlum's At Brown's (1890) protests that ye can't expect impossibles. Joseph Le Conte's "real impossibles" (1888) shows it taking modifiers like any noun.
Less common meanings
- 4In older mathematics, imaginary; designating a number that is not real.
Older algebra books often say that a quadratic equation with no real solutions has two impossible roots.
What earlier scholars dismissed as impossible numbers became central to modern analysis.
Similarimaginary
Oppositereal
Note
An older name from mathematics, now dated. Where a modern text says imaginary, an earlier one could say impossible, as in impossible quantities or the impossible roots of a cubic equation. The name records how such numbers were once regarded rather than what they are. Readers will meet it in historical mathematics, but in current writing imaginary is the word to use.
- 5A skateboarding trick in which the board wraps end over end through a full vertical turn around one of the skater's feet, usually the back foot.
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Origin
From Middle English impossible, borrowed from Old French impossible, from Latin impossibilis, from in- ('not') and possibilis ('possible').