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

To equal. [Obs.] It [is] an impossibility for any creature to adequate God in his eternity. Shelford.

An indirect argument which proves a thing by showing the impossibility or absurdity of the contrary.

Proving indirectly, by showing the absurdity, or impossibility of the contrary. Bp. Berkeley.

itive evidence are often disbelieved, on account of what is called their improbability or impossibility. J. S. Mill.

An impossibility. [Obs.] "Madam," quoth he, "this were an impossible!" Chaucer.

by showing that any other supposition involves an absurdity (reductio ad absurdum), or an impossibility; thus, one quantity may be proved equal to another by showing that it can be neither greater nor less. -- Indirect discourse. (Gram.) See Direct discourse, under Direct. -- Indirect evidence, evidence or testimony…

Impossibility to be avoided or shunned; inevitableness. Shelford.

zed by a sense of extreme uneasiness or discomfort (as of weight on the chest or stomach, impossibility of motion or speech, etc.), or by frightful or oppressive dreams, from which one wakes after extreme anxiety, in a troubled state of mind; incubus. Dunglison.

seems to be; obvious; simple; mere; downright; as, sheer folly; sheer nonsense. "A sheer impossibility." De Quincey. It is not a sheer advantage to have several strings to one's bow. M. Arnold.

Impossibility. [R.] "Utter unpossibility." Poe.

biologist August Weismann, esp. in regard to germ plasm as the basis of heredity and the impossibility of transmitting acquired characteristics; -- often called neo-Darwinism.