impenetrability
(ɪmˌpɛnɪtrəˈbɪlɪtɪ)
[f. next: see -ity. Cf. F. impénétrabilité.]
1. The quality or condition of being impenetrable; incapability of being penetrated, entered, or pierced; inscrutability; unfathomableness; ‘unsusceptibility of intellectual impression’ (J.).
| 1706 Phillips, Impenetrability, a being impenetrable. 1794 Sullivan View Nat. I. 373 Their excessive impenetrability to the action of cold. 1796 Kirwan Elem. Min. (ed. 2) I. 37 The firmness, hardness, and impenetrability of minerals. 1848 C. Brontë J. Eyre xvi, I will put her to some test..such impenetrability..is past comprehension. 1866 Geo. Eliot F. Holt xvii, Jermyn's calculated slowness and conceit in his own impenetrability. |
2. Nat. Philos. That property of matter in virtue of which two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time.
| 1665 Glanvill Scepsis Sci. 44 That Quantity is Divisibility is presumed; but extension is before it, in nature, and our conception, and is the received notion, though perhaps Impenetrability is the truest. 1678 Cudworth Intell. Syst. i. v. 770 Tangibility and Impenetrability were..made by him the very essence of body. 1794 G. Adams Nat. & Exp. Philos. III. xxv. 67 The idea of impenetrability only supposes that two extended substances cannot be in the same place at the same time. 1877 E. R. Conder Bas. Faith v. 222 Extension and impenetrability, long regarded as essential properties of matter, are now perceived to be properties not of atoms, but of masses of coherent molecules. |