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INCONCEIVABLE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Totally unlikely
Synonyms:
impossible; inconceivable; out of the question; unimaginable
Classified under:
Similar:
unthinkable (incapable of being conceived or considered)
Derivation:
inconceivability; inconceivableness (the state of being impossible to conceive)
Context examples:
That his anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable resentment as to refuse his daughter a privilege without which her marriage would scarcely seem valid, exceeded all she could believe possible.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Is not it inconceivable, Henry?
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But all the rest was inconceivable.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Then everything happened, and with inconceivable rapidity.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
“You start me on my investigation with a very serious handicap. It is inconceivable, for example, that this ivy and this lawn would have yielded nothing to an expert observer.”
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The mischief such a man does on an estate, both as to the credit of his employer and the welfare of the poor, is inconceivable.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
It was inconceivable, incredible, impossible!
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
In my aching head the one thought was throbbing that there really was truth in this man's story, that it was of tremendous consequence, and that it would work up into inconceivable copy for the Gazette when I could obtain permission to use it.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
