Word Finder - impossibility

definition

Something that is impossible.

example

Meeting the deadline is an impossibility; there is no way we can be ready in time.

definition

The quality of being impossible.

definition

The state of being unable to do something.

synonyms

• helplessness
• inability
• incapability

The impossibility of obtaining any.

The great variety of views amongst competent critics is significant of the difficulty of the problem, which can hardly be regarded as yet solved; this divergence of opinion perhaps points to the impossibility of maintaining the unity of chs.

Meanwhile Mahmud, realizing the impossibility of crushing the Greek revolt unaided, had bent his pride to ask the help of Mehemet Ali, who was to receive as his reward Crete, the Morea and the pashaliks of Syria and Damascus.

There was yet another outcome of this stubborn persistency of a peculiar type - the impossibility of continuing to share the life of the Western Church.

This result would be contrary to all experience of the impossibility of "perpetual motion," and hence we may conclude that through such a semi-permeable wall, the solvent and the solution at the foot of the column would FIG.

Politically, its outcome was to prove the impossibility of allowing the continu1 of an independent Roman state in the heart of Italy.

He repeatedly insists on the impossibility of senseless matter putting on sense.'

At this time there existed a belief, held at a later date by Berzelius, Gmelin and many others, that the formation of organic compounds was conditioned by a so-called vital force; and the difficulty of artificially realizing this action explained the supposed impossibility of synthesizing organic compounds.

However, he soon realized the impossibility of treating the fathers of Basel as ordinary rebels, and tried a compromise; but as time went on, the fathers became more and more intractable, and between him and them gradually arose an impassable barrier.

Meanwhile the duplicates had reached Moltke, and he, knowing well the temperament of the "Red Prince" and the impossibility of arresting the intended movement, obtained the royal sanction to a letter addressed to the crown prince, in which the latter was ordered to co-operate with his whole command.

The old Hebrew prohibition of graven images was surely based on a like superstition, so far as it was not merely due to the physical impossibility for nomads of heavy statues that do not admit of being carried from camp to camp and from pasture to pasture.

The enmity of the British government to Charles Edward made peace with France an impossibility so long as she continued to harbour the young prince.

The universal test, therefore, of any supposed philosophical principle is the possibility or impossibility of imagining its contradictory.

Thus the pious Hindu, confronted by the impossibility of obtaining perfect knowledge by the senses or by reason, finds his sole perfection in the contemplation of the infinite (Brahma).

On the eve of that council he published at Naples his Causa El onorii Papae, which aimed at demonstrating the moral and historical impossibility of papal infallibility.

The plan of Wallenstein was of long standing, and it was only towards the end, when Schiller realized the impossibility of saying all he had to say within five acts, that he decided to divide it into three parts, a descriptive prologue, Wallensteins Lager, and the two dramas Die Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod.

Reality, independent of the individual consciousness, there must be; reality, independent of all mind, is an impossibility.

Growing rivalry between Austria and Russia in the Balkans rendered the continuance of the League of the Three Emperors a practical impossibility.

That he did not reform at a stroke all ancient abuses appears particularly in relation to the practice of blood revenge; to put an end to this deep-rooted custom would have been an impossibility.

At last, indeed, he came to the conclusion that to do so was impossible, and in that conviction set to work to find a rigorous proof of the impossibility.

More attention seems to have been given to the matter in the United States of America and in Germany and Russia than in England, but the infinite variety of samples known to the commercial expert, and the impossibility of standardizing those in such a manner as to make readily recognizable what the chemist has treated, renders most of the recorded analyses of uncertain value.

The meeting of the princes summoned to Frankfort by the emperor Francis Joseph, in 1863, revealed the ascendancy of Austria among the smaller states of the Confederation; but it revealed also the impossibility of any consolidation of the Confederation without the co-operation of Prussia, which stood outside.

Lights and Buoys.-In view of the difficulties attending navigation in the Gulf, and the impossibility of arranging with the Governments of the littoral for the provision of lights and buoys except on terms which would have greatly hampered shipping, the British Government, in view of the great preponderance of British shipping in the Gulf, has established since 1912 a very complete system of lights and buoys, the cost of which is shared in equal moieties by the Government of India and H.M.

The role which the Bavarian capital now plays as the leading art centre of Germany would have been an impossibility without the splendid munificence of Louis I.

When Nicodemus objected that this was to demand a physical impossibility, he was answered that the new birth was " of water and spirit "- words which doubtless contained a reference to the mission of the Baptist and to his prophecy of One who should baptize with the Holy Spirit.

Owing to the impossibility of employing any metal in contact with the acid, the " chlorine stills," where the above reaction is carried out, must be made of acid-proof stones or " chemical " stoneware.

The plant is universally grown by the cultivators for their own smoking, and, like everything else, was subject to taxation under native rule; but the impossibility of accurate excise supervision has caused the British government to abandon the impost.

The earlier forms of ice-calorimeter, those of Black, and of Laplace and Lavoisier, were useless for work of precision, on account of the impossibility of accurately estimating the quantity of water left adhering to the ice in each case.

The Values Deduced In This Manner For The Equivalent Agreed As Closely As Could Be Expected Considering The Impossibility Of Regulating The External Condition Of Temperature And Moisture With Any Certainty In An Engine Room.

It is true, as Herbart says, that the judgment, " A square circle is an impossibility," does not contain the belief, " A square circle is existent "; but when he goes on to argue that it means, " If a square circle is thought, the conception of impossibility must be added in thought," he falls into a non-sequitur.

The judgment, " A non-existent but so-called square circle is an impossibility," is an unconditional, or categorical judgment of non-existence, quite different from any hypothetical judgment, which depends on the conditions " if it is thought," or " if it exists," or any other " if."

Mill's view of ratiocinative process clearly stands and falls with the presumed impossibility of establishing the necessity for universals of another type than his, for what may be called principles of construction.

We know that we need to pass from what Spinoza terms experientia y oga,' where imagination with its fragmentary apprehension is liable to error and neither necessity nor impossibility can be predicated, right up to that which fictionem terminat - namely, intellectio.

Hence also the impossibility of treating the present subject schematically.

Indeed, the sacerdotal class themselves had made its universal acceptance an impossibility, seeing that their laws, by which the relations of the classes were to be regulated, aimed at permanently excluding the entire body of aboriginal tribes from the religious life of their Aryan masters.

Another limiting condition is found in the practical impossibility of levying by local agencies such imposts as the customs and the income-tax in their modern forms. The elaborate machinery that is requisite for covering the national area and securing the revenue against loss can only be provided by an authority that can deal with the whole territory.

At the time of his death the Riksdag was already a power in the state, and a Catholic reaction in Sweden was by no means an impossibility, if only the Catholics had been able to find capable leaders.

By the beginning of 1616, Gustavus had become convinced of the impossibility of partitioning reunited Muscovy, while Muscovy recognized the necessity of buying off the invincible Swedes by some cession of territory.

He notices also the impossibility of supporting a large army, and the consequent destruction of the greater part of the men and beasts which accompanied the expedition of Alexander.

Since their day not only had the opposition between sense and reason broken down, but the reasoned scepticism of Pyrrho and Arcesilaus had made the impossibility of attaining truth the primary condition of well-being.

It has been insinuated both by contemporary and by later critics that being disappointed at his loss of popularity, and convinced of the impossibility of co-operating with his colleagues, he exaggerated his malady as a pretext for the inaction that was forced upon him by circumstances.

Blount adopted and expanded Hobbes's arguments against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; and, mainly in the words of Burnet's Archeologiae philosophicae, he asserts the total inconsistency of the Mosaic Hexaemeron with the Copernican theory of the heavens, dwelling with emphasis on the impossibility of admitting the view developed in Genesis, that the earth is the most important part of the universe.

The impossibility of conquering Bohemia had now become obvious, and it was resolved that a council should meet at Basel to examine the demands of the Hussites.

The Synod of Dort (1618-1619) which affirmed the sublapsarian without excluding the supralapsarian form of Calvinism, condemned the views of Arminius and his followers, who were known as Remonstrants from the remonstrance "which in four articles repudiates supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism (which regarded the Fall as foreseen, but not decreed), and the doctrines of irresistibility of grace, and of the impossibility of the elect finally falling away from it, and boldly asserts the universality of grace."

It is a psychological impossibility."

Here it need only be said that Hall himself soon became aware of the impossibility of the "Helstat," and his whole policy aimed at making its absurdity patent to Europe, and substituting for it a constitutional Denmark to the Eider which would be in a position to come to terms with an independent Holstein.

There came a time, however, when Clement and more particularly his following had to acknowledge the vanity of these illusive dreams; and before his death, which took place on the 16th of September 1394, he realized the impossibility of overcoming by brute force an opposition which was founded on the convictions of the greater part of Catholic Europe, and discerned among his adherents the germs of disaffection.

It is in fact an impossibility that loss should go on without regeneration, for if any part of the sun's body loses heat, it will be unable to support the pressure of neighbouring parts upon it; it will therefore be compressed, in a general sense towards the sun's centre, the velocities of its molecules will rise, and its temperature will again tend upwards.

As for himself, his heart was now fixed, - his mind was made up, - but he realized more than he had ever done before the power of temptation, and the difficulty, the almost impossibility, of understanding and holding to the truth.

This brought them within the sphere of reflection, and gave as their guarantee the impossibility of thinking them reversed; and led to their being regarded as wholly relative to human intelligence, restricted to the sphere of the phenomenal, incapable of revealing to us substantial reality - necessary, yet subjective.