impractical
/ɪmˈpraktɪk(ə)l
/adjective
1Not adapted for use or action; not sensible or realistic: impractical high heels his impractical romanticism...
- In a 1986 book, Matsunaga came up with a brilliant, idealistic, impractical, and visionary idea.
- A very romantic nature can establish impractical or uncertain objectives.
- We hope he will join us in looking for realistic proposals to solve this problem instead of inventing impractical schemes like some latter day Walter Mitty.
Synonyms
unsuitable, not sensible, inappropriate, unserviceable
1.1(Of a person) not skilled or interested in doing practical work: Paul was impractical and dreamy...
- People who are smart but don't get things done often have PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical.
- She had certainly been an attractive woman but, as he soon discovered, she was also impractical, ineffectual and, above all, conventional.
- Academics are supposed to be the impractical ones: the theorists.
Synonyms
unrealistic, idealistic, head-in-the-clouds, out of touch with reality, romantic, dreamy, fanciful, starry-eyed, visionary, quixotic
informal airy-fairy
2chiefly North American Impossible to do; impracticable.Urine tests for alcohol proved to be just as impractical in the field as blood sampling....
- India, for instance, makes short-term assignments impractical because of laborious visa requirements.
- If a site is extremely large, it becomes impractical to create and maintain an A-Z index for it.
Synonyms
unrealistic, unworkable, unfeasible, non-viable, impracticable;
ill-considered, ill-thought-out, illogical, unreasonable, far-fetched, impossible, silly, foolish, absurd, wild
informal cock-eyed, crackpot, crazy, half-baked
Usage
On the differences in the use of impractical and impracticable, see impracticable (usage).
Derivatives
impracticality
/ noun ...- The advice was given in the specific context of large-scale arrests and the impracticality of bringing all cases before the courts, where many would receive a caution anyway.
- She must have been in her early twenties, with a sharp, overstyled haircut and fingernails that announced their impracticality in flashes of silver.
- In the era of the internet and video communications there is also an element of impracticality to such attempts at censorship.
impractically
- They are excellent glasses, but very expensive and impractically large.
- Unlike previous single-molecule experiments, which were impractically complicated for large-scale applications, the simplicity of this design lends itself to many applications.
- I approached my education, even my graduate and postgraduate education (at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California and at the University of Ghana), rather impractically.