English

Adjective

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.

   • 1915, Emerson Hough, The Purchase Price, chapterII:

     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

     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.

Quotations

• For usage examples of this term, see Citations:out of the question.

Translations