| 释义 |
impassable, a.|ɪmˈpɑːsəb(ə)l, -pæs-|
[f. im-2 + passable.]
That cannot be passed.
1. That cannot be passed along, through, or across; impossible to traverse or travel through.
1568North tr. Gueuara's Diall Pr. (1582) 446 A buckler or shield impassable. 1697W. Dampier Voy. I. 167 All the Country..is full of impassable Woods. 1705Stanhope Paraphr. III. 550 The impassable Gulf fixed between us and all Happiness. 1844H. H. Wilson Brit. India I. 453 It were most impolitic..to fix for ever impassable bounds to the public revenues. 1860Tyndall Glac. i. xii. 89 The glacier, though badly cut, was not impassable.
†2. That cannot pass (away or through). Obs.
1780M. Madan Thelyphthora II. 219 But the priesthood of Christ himself..is ἀπαράβατος, impassable from Him to any. 1832Examiner 481/1 Bloated to a size as impassable through Heaven's gates, as is a camel through the needle's eye.
3. That cannot be ‘passed’ or made to pass. rare.
1865–6H. Phillips Amer. Paper Curr. II. 28 To cut a hole in each bill..thereby to render them impassable. 1887Pall Mall G. 28 June 4/1 When a half a million gilt sixpences in circulation make half-sovereigns practically impassable.
Hence imˈpassableness; imˈpassably adv.
1727Bailey vol. II, Impassableness. 1801Crutwell Tour Gt. Brit., Lincolnsh. (T.), No carts used to come here by reason of the impassableness of the boggy soil. 1828Webster, Impassably. 1865Mrs. Whitney Gayworthys xxix. (1879) 295 God knows what impassableness between their two suffering hearts. |