impossible
part of speech
adjective (impossible); noun (the impossible)
meaning for a pupil
1) Not able to happen or be done: «It's impossible to be in two places at once». tree →
2) Very difficult to deal with: «You're impossible today!» tree →
3) (the impossible) Something that cannot be done: «They tried to do the impossible». tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths: an impossible event has probability 0 (like rolling a 7 on a normal 1–6 dice). The probability scale goes from impossible (0) through unlikely, even chance, likely, to certain (1). In stories heroes «do the impossible». In everyday life people say «impossible» for very hard things that are actually possible.
examples
- It is impossible to roll a 7 with one normal dice. tree →
- Nothing is impossible if you keep trying! tree →
- It's impossible to see in this fog. tree →
- My little brother is impossible when he's tired. tree →
- Flying like a bird is impossible for people without a machine. tree →
- The puzzle seemed impossible, but we solved it. tree →
- Mark the event "the sun rises in the west" as impossible. tree →
- “It is impossible!” cried the King. tree →
note
Prefix im- + possible (im- before p, b, m). Opposite: possible. In maths, impossible = probability 0, exactly; «unlikely» is not the same as «impossible». Not used with «very»: «nearly impossible» or «almost impossible» is fine.
In the corpora
- So «unpossible» is wrong; it is «impossible».
- im- is used before many words starting with m or p: impossible, immature, impatient.
- Someone who sees a PIN and gets the card can take money, and getting it back can be slow or impossible.
- Some people disliked the suffragettes' methods, but their actions made the question impossible to ignore.
- "Impossible to put down" usually means very exciting to read; in the anti-gravity joke it also means the book floats away.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «impossible» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.