IMPOSSIBILITY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Impossibility

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/ɪmpˌɔsɪbˈɪlɪti/ Listen

noun

Impossibility n. (pl. impossibilities)

The quality of being impossible; impracticability. "They confound difficulty with impossibility."

An impossible thing; that which is not possible; that which can not be thought, done, or endured. "Impossibilities! O, no, there's none."

Inability; helplessness. (R.)

Logical impossibility, a condition or statement involving contradiction or absurdity; as, that a thing can be and not be at the same time. See Principle of Contradiction, under Contradiction.

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Etymology of 'Impossibility'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Impossibility" Quotes from Famous Books

... to be diverted. Going back to the state-room for a wrap she returned to wait for the clerk's reappearance. This final pause soon proved to be the severest trial of all. The minutes dragged leaden-winged; and to sit quietly in the silence and solitude of the great saloon became a nerve-racking impossibility. When it went past endurance, she rose and ...

— The Price • Francis Lynde

... binding upon all. Zarlino, however, made a new departure. He not only assigned the true intervals of the major scale, according to perfect intonation, but argued strongly for equal temperament, and demonstrated the impossibility of chromatic music upon any other basis. Purists may still continue to doubt whether this was an absolute advantage to the art of music, since it carries with it the necessity of having all harmonic relations something ...

— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... of no reason why we should not be friends," he replied, quietly, knowing he could say that much with all candor, yet feeling that friendship between them was an utter impossibility, and that of this Walcott was as conscious ...

— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... combining two different kinds of glass, the colours can be extinguished, still leaving a residue of refraction, and he employed this residue in the construction of achromatic lenses—lenses yielding no colour—which Newton thought an impossibility. By setting a water-prism—water contained in a wedge-shaped vessel with glass sides (B, fig. 8)—in opposition to a wedge of glass (to the right of B), this point can be illustrated before you. We have first of all the position (dotted) of the unrefracted ...

— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... well-known local gentleman being reported to have gone as far as publicly to undertake to eat the first engine which ever crossed that formidable gulf. But engineers and craftsmen set to work with a will, and before long what had appeared an impossibility was rapidly taking shape as an actuality. Eight hundred yards in length, the greater portion was constructed on timber piles, over 500 in number, in 113 spans, driven into the sand. The navigable channel, at the Barmouth end, was crossed by an iron-work construction, of seven fixed ...

— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

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