impossible

adjective

1. 1

   Not possible; not able to be done or happen.

   Antonio: What impossible matter will he make easy next? Sebastian: I think he will carry this island home in his pocket and give it his son for an apple. Antonio : And sowing the kernels of it in the sea bring forth more islands.

   It was impoſſible that the queen of France [Marie Antoinette] ſhould not be deeply affected by a conteſt, which ſo cloſely involved her neareſt and deareſt connections, and threatened ſo immediate and perhaps irreparable a breach of the harmony and friendſhip ſubſiſting between them.

   ALICE: I'm looking for a White Rabbit.... So if you don't mind. (Alice looks through the key hole) There he is - I simply must get through DOORKNOB: Sorry, you're much too big. Simply impassable. ALICE: You mean impossible. DOORKNOB: No, IMPASSABLE - NOTHING'S IMPOSSIBLE.

   13 March 1962, John F. Kennedy, speech at the White House Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

2. 2

   Very difficult to deal with.

   You never listen to a word I say – you're impossible!

   This humidity is impossible.

   I never met a more impossible girl.

3. 3

   datedimaginary

   impossible quantities, or imaginary numbers

noun

1. 1

   An impossibility.

   In fact, to most people, the real impossibles do not seem impossible, or wonderful, or even difficult at all.

   “Ye can't expect impossibles, and Jim hadn't no idee o' takin' yer trunk along of him in ther buggy when he kem hyar this mornin'.

   For one thing, the Gospel's moral impossibles appear, in this light, not as an objection to Christianity, but as one of its most striking evidences.

   Yes, the church lives for impossibles, and she lives by impossibles, and if she shrinks from impossibles her own vigor will shrink and die.

2. 2

   A skateboard trick consisting of a backflip performed in midair.

Forms

plural

impossibles

comparative

more impossible

superlative

most impossible