#Insurmountable problems full#
" Technology alone rarely confers an insurmountable military edge tactics, organization, training, leadership, and other products of an effective bureaucracy are necessary to realize the full potential of new inventions. "I fell asleep listening to his slow, even breaths, his stubbornness finally melting away in the face of insurmountable fatigue. "Her insurmountable nervousness," "an insurmountable prejudice," "this insurmountable level of scrutiny."Īnd we even occasionally talk about insurmountable leads, edges, and advantages: those that our competitors (or enemies) can't overcome it's like we're standing atop a mountain, where they can't reach us. According to one linguist, "insurmountable" is a "ghastly philological monster." Okay, sure, it's a mouthful.īut a mouthful is always great for emphasis! So pick "insurmountable" to describe the most daunting, most discouraging, most complex problems, challenges, and obstacles.Īnd usually it is a problem, a challenge, or an obstacle that we call insurmountable.īut we can also talk about insurmountable hurdles, barriers, pains, feelings, concerns, deficits, handicaps, conditions, damages, debts, costs, etc. If you find this word ugly, you're not alone.
#Insurmountable problems how to#
The opposite forms are "surmountable," "surmountably," and "surmountableness." (Dictionaries don't recognize "surmountability," for reasons I can't fathom!)Īnd you can simply use the verb "surmount," which is the transitive kind, as in "They surmounted this challenge" and "They're still surmounting this problem." how to use it: Part of speech: adjective: "an insurmountable problem," "the challenge seemed insurmountable at first."įor a noun, use "insurmountableness" or, my preference, "insurmountability."
Insurmountable things are the opposite: they're so huge or so difficult that you can't deal with them successfully. Surmountable things can be beaten they can be dealt with successfully. Literally speaking, to surmount something to is to climb to the top of it.Īnd figuratively speaking, to surmount something (like, to surmount a problem or a hurdle) is to rise above it, or to beat it: to deal with it successfully. The word "surmount" came to us through French, ultimately from Latin, and you can almost see its Latin bits: super, meaning "over or above," and mons, meaning "mountain." (To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.) definition: A moun_ is someone who makes a loud, showy display to fool people, often to take their money-as if they've climbed up on a bench to shout at everyone. In other words, it's bragging that's extremely exaggerated, the kind that seems to say, "I can move mountains."ģ. When one thing is _mount to another thing, that means they're like two equivalent heaps or mountains: they have basically the same effect or the same significance.Ĥ. Can you recall all four?ġ. Something _mount is superior (better and higher) than everything else.Ģ. It literally means "unable to be risen above:" _sup_.Īnd, insurmountable has four cousins we've met before that also come from the Latin word for "mountain," mons. Can you recall it? It's basically the same as insurmountable, just with the "mount" bit deleted and, swapped in, a different spelling of the "sur" bit.
Our word insurmountable has a very close synonym that we checked out a few weeks ago. But if a problem proves just too high and just too steep, we'll call it insurmountable. connect this word to others:Īre you an optimist? A climb-every-mountain kind of person? Someone who sees almost every problem as surmountable, or able to be climbed over?
0 kommentar(er)
