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impregnable
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show 147 more with this conextual meaning
  • It's totally impregnable.†   (source)
  • As she pulled it on she approved of the firm caress of the bias cut through the silk of her petticoat, and she felt sleekly impregnable, slippery and secure; it was a mermaid who rose to meet her in her own full-length mirror.†   (source)
  • Of being locked into a physically impregnable cocoon.†   (source)
  • Within three months the gleaming steel cage we had thought so impregnable looked like it had taken a direct hit from a howitzer.†   (source)
  • They had dominated those slopes, caves, and hideouts for centuries, turning them into impregnable military strongholds against all comers.†   (source)
  • To open a window, a staff person had to unlock the security screen, which was a thick impregnable mesh on a steel frame, then lift the heavy unbreakable-glass-paned window, then shut and relock the security screen.†   (source)
  • ....impregnable?†   (source)
  • To reach it one had to pass through two impregnable walls, each with armed guards; and once inside, four massive gates had to be unlocked before one even reached the area where I was kept.†   (source)
  • There was a void in his being that had been padded and cushioned over the years, and now that covering had grown impregnable.†   (source)
  • She's impregnable herself, and with the element of time working for her she eventually gets inside everyone.†   (source)
  • Fear that a $25,000 car will crumple like a toy in an accident, whereas a $50,000 car will wrap your loved ones in a cocoon of impregnable steel.†   (source)
  • The supple armor had been a gift from the deceased Antonio de Lorca and was nigh impregnable.†   (source)
  • It still seemed to me that he took a stance all too conveniently impregnable.†   (source)
  • The town was "amazingly strong ...almost impregnable, every avenue fortified," he wrote.†   (source)
  • The whites of his moony eyes grew large and misty as his mouth struggled yearningly and lost against the familiar, impregnable loneliness drifting in around him again like suffocating fog.†   (source)
  • But not in vain: Their charge would mark the beginning of the end for "impregnable" Suribachi—and thus for Iwo Jima itself as a factor in the war.†   (source)
  • Its walls, roof lines and smokestacks looked trim, impregnable like a fortress.†   (source)
  • He'd assaulted then invaded parts of her she'd thought impregnable.†   (source)
  • He needed information; he needed to find a weak link in the wizard's seemingly impregnable armor.†   (source)
  • Mind you, for art, for the development of the soul, nothing is better than a landscape of separate and impregnable towers.†   (source)
  • It was as if they did not trust the impregnability of their own position.†   (source)
  • Your only chance for survival is to band together in a tight, impregnable brotherhood of your own, to protecteach other, to care for each other, and to lean on each other from this day forward until the day you graduate.†   (source)
  • This impregnable vegetation was like a moat protecting the summit.†   (source)
  • His relaxed manner, for one thing, then his rather awkward but real attempt at conversation, followed by the insinuating touch of his hand on her shoulder (or was she reading too much into this?) when they had both gazed at the Arabian stallion: these seemed to her to signal cracks in that impregnable mask.†   (source)
  • All the stone-circle had been thrown down and removed, and the land within was made into a garden filled with orchards and trees, and a stream ran through it; but in the midst of all there was a lake of clear water, and out of it the Tower of Orthanc rose still, tall and impregnable, and its black rock was mirrored in the pool.†   (source)
  • I felt that we of the crew should be assisting them, granting them the benefits of the technology we had preserved, rather than building ourselves an impregnable paradise and treating the world as a combination game preserve and whorehouse.†   (source)
  • The Germans fortified it and made it impregnable.†   (source)
  • Her busyness gave Missie an air of abandon, quite impregnable.†   (source)
  • And if Tate was (incredible...impossible...100-1 against) working with Reich, Reich himself might prove impregnable.†   (source)
  • "Those whole numbers that are indivisible by any number other than one and itself." Given the dramatic manner with which she had said indivisible, one might have imagined Nina was speaking of the impregnability of a fortress.   (source)
    impregnability = ability to withstand attack
  • The castle's front entrance, which had been impregnable for so many years, swung open as Sorrento approached, like an automatic door at a supermarket.   (source)
    impregnable = able to withstand attack
  • They think their shield is impregnable.   (source)
  • And, I knew, that same emblematic letter adorned the front gates of Castle Anorak, his avatar's impregnable stronghold.   (source)
  • They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be.   (source)
  • "Not impregnable," he said, "merely inconvenient."†   (source)
  • "The Eyrie is impregnable," Lysa Arryn declared calmly.†   (source)
  • Our harvest has been plentiful, the mountains protect us, and the Eyrie is impregnable.†   (source)
  • But there was another castle nearby, vastly larger and impregnable.†   (source)
  • So beautiful, Alayne thought, so impregnable.†   (source)
  • ....impregnable to any assault, magical or physical.†   (source)
  • "If Storm's End is so impregnable, how do you mean to take it?" asked Malo.†   (source)
  • I threw myself on hand grenades, and charged into the machine-gun fire aimed by impregnable gunners.†   (source)
  • A nigh-impregnable stronghold, and Stannis Baratheon's last foothold in the south.†   (source)
  • Even if they could bring an army through the mountains and past the Bloody Gate, the Eyrie is impregnable.†   (source)
  • No castle is impregnable.†   (source)
  • The Eyrie is impregnable, Mother said.†   (source)
  • The caves seemed almost impregnable and with all their supplies and preparations he thought they might indeed hold off an army until David was strong enough to join the fight.†   (source)
  • He had come to believe, after years of creating respect and fear wherever he put his foot down, after years of being the tallest man in every gathering, that he was impregnable.†   (source)
  • The combined weight of Saphira's declaration and her impregnable logic had convinced Nasuada and Arya to grant their approval, albeit grudgingly.†   (source)
  • But their increased proximity revealed nothing new and only served to reinforce Roran's impression that the city was nigh on impregnable.†   (source)
  • Not as grotesquely huge as Harrenhal, nor as solid and impregnable to look at as Storm's End, yet there had been a great strength in those stones, a sense that within those walls a man might feel safe.†   (source)
  • She looked at the quiet, impregnable room, and at the light-the light that came from his motor-on the faces of men who were the most serene and confident gathering she had ever attended.†   (source)
  • Despite its formidable presence high over the river, its steep, rockbound approaches, Fort Washington was, in several ways, not the impregnable bastion it seemed.†   (source)
  • I tried, I walked, I knocked, I talked, and I tried some more, but an impregnable, invisible wall stood between me and the local people.†   (source)
  • And yet, she was a good soul, tormented immeasurably and destined to suffer forever in a body that was a fortress against love, an impregnable glacis.†   (source)
  • -sure, impregnable woman.†   (source)
  • The city was impregnable.†   (source)
  • The door was not locked, thought Dagny; she felt an unreasoning desire to tear it open and walk in-it was only a few wooden boards with a brass knob, it would require only a small muscular contraction of her arm-but she looked away, knowing that the power of a civilized order and of Ken Danagger's right was more impregnable a barrier than any lock.†   (source)
  • The walled city stood alone upon the edge of a large bay, self-contained and impregnable to any conceivable attack.†   (source)
  • The Eyrie might be impregnable, but it would soon be inaccessible as well, and the way down grew more hazardous every day.†   (source)
  • We did not receive a college education at the Institute, we received an indoctrination, and all our courses were designed to make us malleable, unimaginative, uninquisitive citizens of the republic, impregnable to ideas—or thought—unsanctioned by authority.†   (source)
  • He walked around the perimeter, searching for a means to achieve the pinnacle, but in vain, for the weathered formation was impregnable.†   (source)
  • If she left the valley, the screen would close for her as tightly, Atlantis would descend under a vault of rays more impregnable than the bottom of the ocean, and she, too, would be left to struggle for the things she had not known how to see, she, too, would be left to fight a mirage of primordial savagery, while the reality of all that she desired would never come again within her reach, But the pull of the outer world, the pull that drew her to follow the plane, was not the image of Hank Rearden-she knew that she could not return to him, even if she returned to the world-the pull was the vision of Hank Rearden's courage and the courage of all those still fighting to stay alive.†   (source)
  • The Eyrie is impregnable.†   (source)
  • Life hadn't got at her yet; she had a false air of impregnability.†   (source)
  • He has evidently a hiding-place in his house that he fancies to be pretty impregnable.†   (source)
  • The heights of Kennesaw were impregnable.†   (source)
  • They knew they were impregnable in armour, and they did as they pleased.†   (source)
  • The lines around Kennesaw Mountain are impregnable.†   (source)
  • Yes, the lines around Kennesaw Mountain were impregnable.†   (source)
  • Stengel was impregnable to friendship.†   (source)
  • He could almost see her, waiting in one of the dark airless rooms in the little grim house's impregnable solitude.†   (source)
  • Eugene feasted from a high chair by his father's side, filled his distending belly until it was drum-tight, and was permitted to stop eating by his watchful sire only when his stomach was impregnable to the heavy prod of Gant's big finger.†   (source)
  • She was helpless before his calm smile and his drawling remarks, for she had never before met anyone who was so completely impregnable.†   (source)
  • They speak quietly, without heat, giving pause to weigh one another's words, as two men already impregnable, each in his own conviction will.†   (source)
  • He had got his hindquarters into the nook of a tree blown down by a gale, in an impregnable position.†   (source)
  • Then he needed respectability, the shield of a virtuous woman, to make his position impregnable even against the men who had given him protection on that inevitable day and hour when even they must rise against him in scorn and horror and outrage; and it was mine and Ellen's father who gave him that Oh, I hold no brief for Ellen: blind romantic fool who had only youth and inexperience to excuse her even if that; blind romantic fool, the†   (source)
  • They were now used to it, accustomed to it; now it had become a permanent part of their lives as well as of their experiences, standing beneath its windless column of smoke taller than and impregnable as a monument which could be returned to at any time.†   (source)
  • At first, in bed in the dark, it seemed colder than ever, as if there had been some puny quality of faint heat in the single light bulb before Shreve turned it off and that now the iron and impregnable dark had become one with the iron and icelike bedclothing lying upon the flesh slacked and thin-clad for sleeping.†   (source)
  • Those were lawless days and it was not safe to leave your house—or even to go to sleep in it—unless you were certain that it was impregnable.†   (source)
  • very truth was not only Miss Rosa's mother but her father too) cast over these visits also that same atmosphere of grim embattled conspiracy and alliance against the two adversaries, one of whom—Mr Coldfield—whether he could have held his own or not, had long since drawn in his picquets and dismantled his artillery and retired into the impregnable citadel of his passive rectitude: and the other—Sutpen—who probably could have engaged and even routed them but who did not even know that he was an embattled foe.†   (source)
  • It was an expedition like that of an army without weapons against an impregnable fortress, an army which at the same time had its hands tied behind its back.†   (source)
  • There still reverberated in her mind the crashes of the two impregnable citadels of her life, thundering to dust about her ears.†   (source)
  • While the society of up-country Georgia was not so impregnable as that of the Coast aristocrats, no family wanted a daughter to wed a man about whose grandfather nothing was known.†   (source)
  • He put them up, making a gate ten feet high, an impregnable barrier.†   (source)
  • Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour.†   (source)
  • Moreover, on her side, was his belief that her ethical motive in the argument was impregnable.†   (source)
  • This was impregnable, and admitted of neither objection nor restriction.†   (source)
  • Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes are crowned with success.†   (source)
  • I saw that his position on the old parchment was impregnable.†   (source)
  • No, no, thank you, I much prefer our nest in the tree, or our impregnable position at Tentholm.†   (source)
  • The tower episode solidified my power, and made it impregnable.†   (source)
  • Some weeks after, the Commodore set sail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso.†   (source)
  • His conscience inured to every assault of destiny, might have appeared to be forever impregnable.†   (source)
  • In the first place, La Rochelle appeared impregnable.†   (source)
  • The iron and stone quality that she had early suspected in him had actually cropped out as an impregnable barrier.†   (source)
  • The castle was built on the corner of a great rock, so that on three sides it was quite impregnable, and great windows were placed here where sling, or bow, or culverin could not reach, and consequently light and comfort, impossible to a position which had to be guarded, were secured.†   (source)
  • Chapter 25 Jurgis got up, wild with rage, but the door was shut and the great castle was dark and impregnable.†   (source)
  • There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it was impregnable?†   (source)
  • On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there ruinously—the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp.†   (source)
  • That influence, in its last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha Dorset's social credit was based on an impregnable bank-account.†   (source)
  • And of these witnesses Mr. Wadgers was presently missing, having retired impregnably behind the bolts and bars of his own house, and Jaffers was lying stunned in the parlour of the "Coach and Horses."†   (source)
  • But even to me, an Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably.†   (source)
  • For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec.†   (source)
  • She had dressed the hive with herbs and honey, fetched a ladder, brush, and crook, made herself impregnable with armour of leather gloves, straw hat, and large gauze veil—once green but now faded to snuff colour—and ascended a dozen rungs of the ladder.†   (source)
  • Afterwards, John Hyrcanus erected the castle into a fortress for the defence of the Temple, and in his day it was considered impregnable to assault; but when Herod came with his bolder genius, he strengthened its walls and extended them, leaving a vast pile which included every appurtenance necessary for the stronghold he intended it to be forever; such as offices, barracks, armories, magazines, cisterns, and last, though not least, prisons of all grades.†   (source)
  • Mabel exclaimed, for the idea that the blockhouse would be impregnable with such a garrison at once crossed her mind.†   (source)
  • Here they had thrown up a kind of fort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children.†   (source)
  • She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles.†   (source)
  • There she was impregnable.†   (source)
  • He was not so young as to be absolutely without a sense that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in adult quarters hitherto deemed impregnable; and whether she were in a position to cause trouble or to suffer from it, whether she and her affliction were something to pity or something to fear, it was beyond him to decide.†   (source)
  • The potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable in station-houses.†   (source)
  • Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.†   (source)
  • Perhaps this would not have been so had it been possible to get rid of M. de Villefort; but, like the feudal barons who rebelled against their sovereign, he dwelt in an impregnable fortress.†   (source)
  • Then also, as Athos had predicted, it became possible to find Mme. Bonacieux, and a convent was not impregnable.†   (source)
  • In this manner a bloodless and complete victory was obtained over that citadel which Ishmael had vainly flattered himself might prove impregnable.†   (source)
  • He described the cataract of Glenn's; the impregnable position of its rocky island, with its caverns and its numerous rapids and whirlpools; he named the name of "La Longue Carabine," and paused until the forest beneath them had sent up the last echo of a loud and long yell, with which the hated appellation was received.†   (source)
  • I propose that we retire to a discreet distance from this impregnable position, and there hold a convocation, or council, to deliberate on what manner we may sit down regularly before the place; or, perhaps, by postponing the siege to another season, gain the aid of auxiliaries from the inhabited countries, and thus secure the dignity of the laws from any danger of a repulse.†   (source)
  • He spoke Italian like a Tuscan, and Spanish like a Castilian; he would have been free, and happy with Mercedes and his father, whereas he was now confined in the Chateau d'If, that impregnable fortress, ignorant of the future destiny of his father and Mercedes; and all this because he had trusted to Villefort's promise.†   (source)
  • Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable.†   (source)
  • What human power could restore me to the light of the sun by rending asunder the huge arches of rock which united over my head, buttressing each other with impregnable strength?†   (source)
  • The safety and comfort of Falconhurst, which had at first seemed so great, now dwindled away in our opinion to nothing; it should be kept up we decided merely as a summer residence, while our cave should be formed into a winter house and impregnable castle.†   (source)
  • Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have two firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever remain impregnable.†   (source)
  • In fact, the sack of La Rochelle, and the assassination of three of four thousand Huguenots who allowed themselves to be killed, would resemble too closely, in 1628, the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572; and then, above all this, this extreme measure, which was not at all repugnant to the king, good Catholic as he was, always fell before this argument of the besieging generals—La Rochelle is impregnable except to famine.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless, he deluded himself at first; he had a feeling of security and of solitude; the bolt once drawn, he thought himself impregnable; the candle extinguished, he felt himself invisible.†   (source)
  • Trusted to an unlimited extent by a careless master, who handed him a bill without looking at it, and pocketed the change without counting it, Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty; and nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could have kept him from it.†   (source)
  • The journals of the day which said that that nearly impregnable structure, of the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, as they call it, reached to the level of the first floor, were mistaken.†   (source)
  • Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is—by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect.†   (source)
  • Now, let us place the body under cover, that each one of us may defend this old man dead as he would his father living, and may his presence in our midst render the barricade impregnable!†   (source)
  • Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy.†   (source)
  • In this manner, the barricade, walled on three streets, in front on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, to the left on the Rues du Cygne and de la Petite Truanderie, to the right on the Rue Mondetour, was really almost impregnable; it is true that they were fatally hemmed in there.†   (source)
  • In the meanwhile, the assailants did not stir, they could be heard marching and swarming through at the end of the street but they did not venture into it, either because they were awaiting orders or because they were awaiting reinforcements before hurling themselves afresh on this impregnable redoubt.†   (source)
  • High-thundering Zeus himself could not now otherwise dispose the fight: those walls are overthrown we put our trust in as impregnable, a bulwark for the ships and for ourselves.†   (source)
  • Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.†   (source)
  • Then he assigned our work, no trifle for my own: I walled the city massively in well-cut stone, to make the place impregnable.†   (source)
  • Sheltered by two great oceans, America seemed impregnable.†   (source)
  • I began to understand why our little band of horsemen had ridden through the night to reach the castle; this would be a place of impregnable safety to men pursued by the Crown's men.†   (source)
  • O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
    To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
    No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
    To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving
    my interior soul impregnable,
    And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.†   (source)
  • 2
    Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,
    Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to
    impregnable and swarming places,
    Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be,
    Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada,
    and the rest,
    (Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska,)
    Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for—and of what
    all sights, North, South, East and West†   (source)
  • shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
    Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle,
    The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of
    the Constitution,
    The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants,
    The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable,
    The unsurvey'd interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals,
    hunters, trappers,
    Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the
    gestation of new States,
    Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming
    up from the uttermost parts,
    Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially†   (source)
  • The towers of Heaven are filled
    With armed watch, that render all access
    Impregnable: oft on the bordering Deep
    Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing
    Scout far and wide into the realm of Night,
    Scorning surprise.†   (source)
  • The first to fall was the Goletta, until then reckoned impregnable, and it fell, not by any fault of its defenders, who did all that they could and should have done, but because experiment proved how easily entrenchments could be made in the desert sand there; for water used to be found at two palms depth, while the Turks found none at two yards; and so by means of a quantity of sandbags they raised their works so high that they commanded the walls of the fort, sweeping them as if from a cavalier, so that no one was able to make a stand or maintain the defence.†   (source)
  • Being rendered by her insular situation and her maritime resources impregnable to the armies of her neighbors, the rulers of Great Britain have never been able, by real or artificial dangers, to cheat the public into an extensive peace establishment.†   (source)
  • Then with the pieces of cable which I had cut on board, I regularly laid them in a circle between the piles up to their tops, which were more than five feet out of the earth, and after drove another row of piles looking within side against them, between two or three feet high, which made me conclude it a little impregnable castle against men and beasts.†   (source)
  • He was not therefore greatly pleased with this cold answer of his nephew; nor could he help launching forth into the praises of Sophia, and expressing some wonder that the heart of a young man could be impregnable to the force of such charms, unless it was guarded by some prior affection.†   (source)
  • To those who are disposed to consider, as innocent omissions in the State constitutions, what they regard as unpardonable blemishes in the plan of the convention, nothing can be said; or at most, they can only be asked to assign some substantial reason why the representatives of the people in a single State should be more impregnable to the lust of power, or other sinister motives, than the representatives of the people of the United States?†   (source)
  • All this I say, exalted and esteemed lady, because it seems to me that for us to remain any longer in this castle now is useless, and may be injurious to us in a way that we shall find out some day; for who knows but that your enemy the giant may have learned by means of secret and diligent spies that I am going to destroy him, and if the opportunity be given him he may seize it to fortify himself in some impregnable castle or stronghold, against which all my efforts and the might of my indefatigable arm may avail but little?†   (source)
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