What's the difference between impassable and impenetrable?

Impassable


Definition:

  • (a.) Incapable of being passed; not admitting a passage; as, an impassable road, mountain, or gulf.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It was unclear what the two men discussed, but the encounter had been planned in advance by the US state department in the hope of breaking a four-year impasse over Iran's nuclear activities.
  • (2) In some respects, the impasse is a vindication of the UK electorate’s decision to leave the EU and pursue its own agreements.” He said when the UK government was free to make its own trade deals after leaving the EU, it should target willing partners such as emerging markets.
  • (3) As clinicians comprehend more fully the multifaceted areas of resistance to treatment, they will be able to help their eating-disordered patients traverse a therapeutic impasse.
  • (4) The consequences of choosing impasse are hardly threatening: mutual recriminations over the cause of stalemate, new rounds of talks, and retaining control of all of the West Bank from within and much of Gaza from without.
  • (5) Ever since the ex-PD leader Walter Veltroni started praising President Kennedy as a way to jettison communism, this has been an abiding theme, manifesting itself institutionally in the desperate attempt to engineer a US-style two-party system through breathtakingly inept electoral reforms – the latest one, the " Porcellum " (after porcello, swine), was behind the impasse earlier this year.
  • (6) When asked whether he was encouraged that Liverpool’s players were still clearly playing for their manager he issued an impassioned defence of his reign, but also warned the club faced a lengthy rebuilding job, “whether that is with me or someone else in the job”.
  • (7) Finally, however, the studio system has delivered a vision of a radical paradigm shift, a way out of the impasse.
  • (8) I cannot see anything before October, or even the end of the year, because there remain some difficult topics to resolve.” Lozano is most intriguing on two things: the issue of justice, and what he sees as a potential impasse over economic policy and the role of multinational corporations, especially those wanting to extract Colombia’s significant riches in gold, emeralds, coal, hydrocarbons and minerals, or turn grassland into palm oil plantations.
  • (9) By removing the safeguards on [the total number of] hours [a trainee medic can be told to work], doctors will be working unsafe hours, leading to poor patient care.” One source involved in helping to formulate Hunt’s new offer said it represented a serious move to break the impasse over the pay and conditions of NHS medics and is his “last-ditch attempt to resolve the junior doctors dispute” before the ballot produces a widely expected mandate for action.
  • (10) The 700-strong trade mission to Emperor Qianlong sailed in a man-of-war equipped with 66 guns, compromising diplomats, businessmen and soldiers, but it ended in an impasse with the emperor refusing to meet them, saying: "We the celestial empire have never valued ingenious articles, nor do we have the slightest need of your country's manufactures."
  • (11) Liverpool have attempted to break the impasse over Adam Lallana’s proposed move to Anfield by tabling a ‘take it or leave it’ £25m offer for the Southampton captain.
  • (12) The Kerry speech at the state department at 11am (4pm GMT) is expected to restate the Obama administration’s continued faith in a two-state solution to the chronic impasse.
  • (13) On Friday, Harris listened impassively as victim impact statements were read out at Southwark crown court.
  • (14) It is concluded that the blood-testis barrier is particularly impassible during phases 1 and 8.
  • (15) It is hard to predict where this developing impasse over pensions will end.
  • (16) The land is held by the Navajo people, and visitors must pay an access fee to drive through the tribal park on a 17-mile dirt loop, which is suitable for all cars when dry but impassable after a storm ( usually in late summer).
  • (17) With Burnham and Cooper at an impasse, a Kendall campaign source said their data suggests Cooper “doesn’t have the numbers to beat Jeremy”.
  • (18) I can still hear the beautiful voices of my family.” Tsarnaev sat impassively throughout the testimony, his lawyer Judy Clarke – who has declined to cross-examine any of the prosecution’s 19 witnesses so far – by his side.
  • (19) The chief executive of HMV , Trevor Moore, has given an impassioned defence of the chain, which will formally slide into administration on Tuesday, insisting it still deserves a place on Britain's high streets.
  • (20) In an impassioned speech that invoked his parents' past as refugees, Miliband told Labour voters and activists in Cumbernauld: "The values of the Scottish people have shone through in this referendum campaign, whatever side that they're on, the values of justice, of fairness and equality.

Impenetrable


Definition:

  • (a.) Incapable of being penetrated or pierced; not admitting the passage of other bodies; not to be entered; impervious; as, an impenetrable shield.
  • (a.) Having the property of preventing any other substance from occupying the same space at the same time.
  • (a.) Inaccessible, as to knowledge, reason, sympathy, etc.; unimpressible; not to be moved by arguments or motives; as, an impenetrable mind, or heart.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) During the entire process the passage between the lumen and the intercellular space remained blocked by the tight junctions, as shown by their impenetrability to ferritin.
  • (2) Veering between a patronising video , a vague report and impenetrable financial data does not amount to openness and accountability.
  • (3) Similar results were obtained with subcutaneous or intraperitoneal thymus grafts and with thymus grafts within cell-impenetrable diffusion chambers.
  • (4) On the other hand, the performance of a material that is liquid-proof is absolute--it is impenetrable and can be accurately described as impervious.
  • (5) In a 70-page document that was largely ignored and almost completely impenetrable, he said the US intended to treat cyberspace as a military battleground.
  • (6) This last phenomenon appears to precede the entry of some axons into the neuropil and suggests that the glia limitans may not necessarily represent an impenetrable barrier to the passage of regenerating axons into the CNS.
  • (7) It appears that the major part of the exclusion volume is due to the collagen-fibril as a rod and the dextran coil as an impenetrable sphere.
  • (8) Some of the games are based around recognisable sports (like football), others around ancient samurai conflicts – but whatever the theme, the nature of the action is absolutely impenetrable to the casual onlooker.
  • (9) Many of the particles could therefore pass freely through tightly woven fabrics with pores up to 10-15 micrometer which might seem to be impenetrable to whole corneocytes, typically larger than 30 X 40 micrometer in the hydrated state.
  • (10) QSI's intentions are no doubt honest but if players as important as goalkeepers can be owned by anonymous third parties in impenetrable offshore companies the potential for match fixing is clear.
  • (11) The more complex a system, the more unintelligible and impenetrable is the map of possible side effects.
  • (12) Spontaneous postoperative expulsion of an IUD resulted in blockage or distortion of the anastomosis in 1 monkey; and in another the anastomosis was patent for a least 5 months, but later became impenetrable.
  • (13) Lactoperoxidase-catalyzed iodination (LCI) was carried out under impenetrable conditions in intact electroplax (where protein exposure on the external surface is monitored) and in split electroplax (where total protein labeling on both the external and internal monolayers of the plasma membrane bilayer is monitored).
  • (14) For 45 minutes, Arjen Robben twisted and turned with the ball only to find himself confronted by an impenetrable thicket of blue-shirted Brazil defenders.
  • (15) And viewed again in this mood, Libeskind's building, with its blank excoriated surfaces, looks closed to understanding; in material as in spirit, impenetrable.
  • (16) Subsequent chemical analysis of sperm-penetrable and impenetrable samples indicated that the concentrations of mucus nondialyzable solids (NDS), mucins, and soluble proteins were significantly higher in impenetrable specimens.
  • (17) The mites ate the germ before the endosperm, leaving an impenetrable layer of crushed endosperm cells between these regions.
  • (18) Two decades after Tutu made it a shining city of defiance amid seemingly impenetrable darkness, Cape Town is finding economic liberation harder than the political kind.
  • (19) Insensitivities at 190 and 100 nm were common to all five types of spores, indicating that these wavelengths were particularly impenetrant and absorbed by the outer layer materials.
  • (20) By announcing a huge programme of bond purchases , much bigger relative to the eurozone bond market than the quantitative easing implemented in the United States, Britain, or Japan, the ECB president, Mario Draghi, erected the impenetrable firewall that had long been needed to protect the monetary Union from a Lehman-style financial meltdown.