Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The quality or condition of being impenetrable.
- noun The inability of two bodies to occupy the same space at the same time.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The character or condition of being impenetrable; incapability of being penetrated, in any sense of that word.
- noun In physics, specifically, that property of matter which prevents two bodies from occupying the same space at the same time; that property of matter by which it excludes all other matter from the space it occupies.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Quality of being impenetrable.
- noun (Physics) That property in virtue of which two portions of matter can not at the same time occupy the same portion of space.
- noun Insusceptibility of intellectual or emotional impression; obtuseness; stupidity; coldness.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The characteristic of being
impenetrable ;invulnerability .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being impenetrable (by people or light or missiles etc.)
- noun incomprehensibility by virtue of being too dense to understand
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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` I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life. '
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Ideas never admit of a total union, but are endowed with a kind of impenetrability, by which they exclude each other, and are capable of forming a compound by their conjunction, not by their mixture.
A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume 1743
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Ideas never admit of a total union, but are endowed with a kind of impenetrability, by which they exclude each other, and are capable of forming a compound by their conjunction, not by their mixture.
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`I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
Chris Coons Lied, Granny Died - Ann Coulter - Townhall Conservative 2010
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` I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life. '
Mary Victrix 2009
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Sometimes I find that even my best intentions are defied by the sudden impenetrability of a book I had been thoroughly enjoying but for one reason or another put down.
Giving Up Roger Sutton 2009
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There were grumblings in the audience about the length and impenetrability of the evening's entertainment, not to mention Jon Frank's melange of grim and absurd realities projected onto the screen -- "sublime bullshit" was opined in impeccable French by an especially grand grande dame -- but any concert that features a naked soprano and Barry Humphries of Dame Edna fame can't be all bad.
Laurence Vittes: A Naked Soprano At The Maribor Festival: Classical Music Breaking Free Laurence Vittes 2011
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There were grumblings in the audience about the length and impenetrability of the evening's entertainment, not to mention Jon Frank's melange of grim and absurd realities projected onto the screen -- "sublime bullshit" was opined in impeccable French by an especially grand grande dame -- but any concert that features a naked soprano and Barry Humphries of Dame Edna fame can't be all bad.
Laurence Vittes: A Naked Soprano At The Maribor Festival: Classical Music Breaking Free Laurence Vittes 2011
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Sometimes I find that even my best intentions are defied by the sudden impenetrability of a book I had been thoroughly enjoying but for one reason or another put down.
Archive 2009-03-01 Roger Sutton 2009
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Methinks Kenneth oversold Telos bigtime, as we post-Marcuseans say, and the readers, condescended to outrageously by talk of its rambunctious intellectual impenetrability, reacted to their preemptive marginalization with appropriate panache.
she commented on the word impenetrability
'Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper, some of them— particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"
"Would you tell me, please," said Alice "what that means?"
"Now you talk like a reasonable child," said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. "I meant by 'impenetrability' that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life."
"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
"When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."'
July 18, 2008