impalpable

From Middle French impalpable, from Medieval Latin impalpabilis. See im- +‎ palpable.

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impalpable (comparative more impalpable, superlative most impalpable)

1. Incapable of being touched or felt; incorporeal, intangible.
   • 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 1:

     But here thou canst not handle aught, neither make the folk ware of thee, not though thou shout thy throat hoarse. For thou and I walk here impalpable and invisible, as it were two dreams walking.

2. Not able to be perceived, or able to be perceived only with difficulty; insubstantial, thin.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     On the benches lay figures covered with yellow linen, on which a fine and impalpable dust had gathered in the course of ages, but nothing like to the extent that one would have anticipated, for in these deep-hewn caves there is no material to turn to dust.

3. Not easily grasped (mentally) or understood.
   • c. 1876, Walt Whitman, “The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness”, in Complete Prose Works‎^[1]:

     What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like of it?—so impalpable—a mere breath, an evanescent tinge?

   • 1899 March, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number MI, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part II, page 496:

     And I heard—him—it—this voice—other voices—all of them were so little more than voices—and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense.

   • 1912, Edith Wharton, chapter XII, in The Reef‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company:

     She had an extraordinary sensitiveness to the impalpable elements of happiness, and as she walked at Darrow’s side her imagination flew back and forth, spinning luminous webs of feeling between herself and the scene about her.

Learned borrowing from Late Latin impalpābilis. By surface analysis, in- +‎ palpable.

• IPA^(key): /ɛ̃.pal.pabl/

impalpable (plural impalpables)

1. impalpable

• “impalpable”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• IPA^(key): /impalˈpable/ [ĩm.palˈpa.β̞le]
• Rhymes: -able
• Syllabification: im‧pal‧pa‧ble

impalpable m or f (masculine and feminine plural impalpables)

1. impalpable

• “impalpable”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024