impracticable[im prak′ti kə bəl]
- not capable of being carried out in practice: an impracticable plan
- not capable of being used: an impracticable road
- Now Rare not capable of being managed or dealt with; intractable: an impracticable person
Origin of impracticable; from in- + practicable
- Impossible to do or carry out: Refloating the sunken ship intact proved impracticable because of its fragility.
- Unfit for passage: roads impracticable in winter.
- Archaic Unmanageable; intractable.
- im·prac′ti·ca·bil′i·ty, im·prac′ti·ca·ble·ness
(comparative more impracticable, superlative most impracticable)
- Not practicable; impossible or difficult in practice.
- Of a passage or road: impassable.
- c. 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, published 1960, page 18:
- H. is a person of extraordinary health & vigor, of unerring perception, & equal expression; and yet he is impracticable, and does not flow through his pen or (in any of our legitimate aqueducts) through his tongue.
- 1867, James Parton, Famous Americans of Recent Times, page 83:
- The strict constructionists had dwindled to a few impracticables, headed by John Randolph.
- 1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude, page 187:
- Then there are the gladiators, to whom it is always a battle ; 'tis no matter on which side, they fight for victory; then the heady men, the egotists, the monotones, the steriles, and the impracticables.
From im- + practicable.