out of the question

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English

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Adjective

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out of the question (comparative more out of the question, superlative most out of the question)

  1. (idiomatic) Not remotely possible.
    • 1898, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost Special:
      A second special was out of the question, as the ordinary local service was already somewhat deranged by the first.
    • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
      Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, []. Even such a boat as the Mount Vernon offered a total deck space so cramped as to leave secrecy or privacy well out of the question, even had the motley and democratic assemblage of passengers been disposed to accord either.
    • 2012 March 22, Scott Tobias, AV Club, The Hunger Games[1]:
      If Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games turns up on middle-school curricula 50 years from now—and as accessible dystopian science fiction with allusions to early-21st-century strife, that isn’t out of the question—the lazy students of the future can be assured that they can watch the movie version and still get better than a passing grade.

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