impossibility

Noun

1. Something that is impossible.
   • 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. - 1645 March...
   • My dear Tom, you are going to undertake an Impossibility. If you knew my Father, you would never think of obtaining his Consent. - 1749, Henry Fielding, chapter VII, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III,...
2. The quality of being impossible.
   • 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...
   • [L]et the mutinous winds / Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun; / Murdering impossibility, to make / What cannot be, slight work. - c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of...
   • [H]e 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 […] - 1749, [John...
3. The state of being unable to do something.
   • Here by this petition whan we say, Leade vs not into temptation, we learne to know our own impossibilitie and infirmitie, namely that we bee not able of our owne selues to with∣stand this great and mightye enemye the...
   • […] out of their own torment, they [the damned] see the felicitie of the saints; togither with their impossibility of attayning it. - 1607, Joseph Hall, Holy Observations, Lib. 1, London: Samuel Macham, 59, p. 85:
   • Many texts present him [Satan] with sadness, partly from his incapability of salvation, for want of a Saviour; partly from his impossibility to repent, because of his implacable and invincible malice. - 1652, Thomas...

   Synonyms: inability incapability helplessness