1. Incapable of being surpassed or exceeded. rare.
1611. Cotgr., Insurmontable, vnsurmountable, vnexceedable.
1745. Young, Nt. Th., VIII. 328. That unsurmountable extreme of guilt!
2. Incapable of being surmounted or overcome; insurmountable: a. Of difficulties, etc. (Common in 18th c.)
1701. Lond. Gaz., No. 3713/1. We passed the Mountains … Which were thought unsurmountable.
1757. Foote, Author, I. Wks. 1799, I. 141. The obscurity … of your birth, will prove an unsurmountable bar.
1788. Trifler, No. 11. 134. The Prolixity of six and thirty Stanzas in a Pastoral Tale, proves an unsurmountable Exception.
1911. Riker, Henry Fox, II. 126. The obstacle was not unsurmountable.
b. Of feelings.
c. 1740. Mrs. Delany, Life & Corr. (1861), I. 29. The courtship … was awkward to Gromio (who saw too well my unsurmountable dislike).
1771. Goldsm., Hist. Eng., II. 85. An unsurmountable aversion to the English government.
1791. Burke, Lett. to Memb. Nat. Assemb., 50. If disgust, if unsurmountable nausea, drive them away from such spectacles,… I cannot blame them.
3. Inextinguishable, unquenchable.
1725. Fam. Dict., s.v. Fever, It causes a violent Heat and unsurmountable Thirst.
Hence Unsurmountableness.
1894. Thinker, VI. 76. Superstitious faith in nature’s unsurmountableness.
