IMPASSABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does impassable mean? 

• IMPASSABLE (adjective)
  The adjective IMPASSABLE has 1 sense:

1. incapable of being passed

  Familiarity information: IMPASSABLE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMPASSABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Incapable of being passed

Synonyms:

impassable; unpassable

Similar:

unclimbable; unsurmountable (incapable of being surmounted or climbed)

unnavigable (incapable of being navigated)

untraversable (incapable of being traversed)

Antonym:

passable (able to be passed or traversed or crossed)

 Context examples 

You know the distance to Sotherton; it was in the middle of winter, and the roads almost impassable, but I did persuade her.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The place which Maple White's chalk-marks had indicated as his own means of access was now entirely impassable.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The kingdom is a peninsula, terminated to the north-east by a ridge of mountains thirty miles high, which are altogether impassable, by reason of the volcanoes upon the tops: neither do the most learned know what sort of mortals inhabit beyond those mountains, or whether they be inhabited at all.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

There were few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently depended; but, at the same time, there was no one whose knowledge of a sister's frailty would have mortified her so much—not, however, from any fear of disadvantage from it individually to herself, for, at any rate, there seemed a gulf impassable between them.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Another hour or two's snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Yet if the lady is correct in saying that the flooring and walls are sound, and that the door, window, and chimney are impassable, then her sister must have been undoubtedly alone when she met her mysterious end.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height of summer.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He wished the road might be impassable, that he might be able to keep them all at Randalls; and with the utmost good-will was sure that accommodation might be found for every body, calling on his wife to agree with him, that with a little contrivance, every body might be lodged, which she hardly knew how to do, from the consciousness of there being but two spare rooms in the house.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)