impossibility

From Middle French impossibilité, from Latin impossibilitās.

impossibility (countable and uncountable, plural impossibilities)

1. Something that is impossible.

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

2. (uncountable) The quality of being impossible.
   • South

     They confound difficulty with impossibility.

   • 1749, [John Cleland], Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: Printed [by Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], OCLC 731622352:

     ...he 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...

3. (obsolete) Inability; helplessness.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Latimer to this entry?)

• (something that is impossible): See also Thesaurus:impossibility

• (something that is impossible): certainty, inevitability, possibility; See also Thesaurus:possibility