From Middle French impossibilité, from Latin impossibilitās.

• (RP) IPA: /ɪmˌpɒsɪˈbɪliti/
• (America) IPA: /ɪmˌpɑsɪˈbɪliti/

impossibility

1. Something that is impossible.

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

   • 1645 March 14 (Gregorian calendar), John Milton, Tetrachordon: Expositions upon the Foure Chief Places in Scripture, which Treat of Mariage, or Nullities in Mariage. […], London: [s.n.], →OCLC ↗, page 17 ↗:

     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.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, chapter VII, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC ↗, book XIV, page 104 ↗:

     My dear Tom, you are going to undertake an Impossibility. If you knew my Father, you would never think of obtaining his Consent.

   • 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter II, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume I, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC ↗, [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010001278701;view=1up;seq=89 page 73]:

     The ancient teachers of this science […] promised impossibilities, and performed nothing.

2. (uncountable) 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 of this demaunde to the Cardinal,

   • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act V, scene iii]:

     [L]et the mutinous winds / Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun; / Murdering impossibility, to make / What cannot be, slight work.

   • 1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC ↗:

     [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 […]

   • 1838, [Edgar Allan Poe], chapter XXII, in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC ↗, page 173 ↗:

     But the utter impossibility of succeeding in this desperate task soon became evident.

   • 1937, George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier‎, New York: Harcourt, Brace, published 1958, Part 1, Chapter 4, p. 61:

     Ever since the war, in the complete impossibility of getting houses, parts of the population have overflowed into supposedly temporary quarters in fixed caravans.

3. (obsolete) The state of being unable to do something.

   Synonyms: inability, incapability, helplessness

   • 1607, Joseph Hall, Holy Observations, Lib. 1‎, London: Samuel Macham, 59, p. 85:

     […] out of their own torment, they [the damned] see the felicitie of the saints; togither with their impossibility of attayning it.

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

• (antonym(s) of “something that is impossible”): certainty, inevitability, possibility; See also Thesaurus:possibility

• French: impossibilité

• French: impossibilité
• German: Unmöglichkeit
• Italian: impossibilità
• Portuguese: impossibilidade
• Russian: невозмо́жность
• Spanish: imposibilidad