Definition:

In rhetoric, the reference to an impossible action or event or to an unsatisfiable condition. Also known as the impossibility figure. Plural: adynata (the stringing together of impossibilities).

A type of hyperbole, the adynaton trope can also be an admission that words are inadequate to describe, relate, or explain something.

See Examples and Observations below. Also see:

• Analogy
• Aporia
• Figures of Speech

• The Greatest Hyperboles of All Time
• Inexpressibility

Etymology:
From the Greek, "unable, impossible"

Examples and Observations:

• "[P]roposing marriage to Alena was probably the most unpredictable thing Nick had ever done, and everyone who knew him was flabbergasted by the news of his engagement. Some of them actually broke out in laughter, while others simply refused to believe. Everyone who knew Nick seemed absolutely convinced that pigs might fly, and the Cubs might win the Series, but the Bug Man would never, ever take a mate."
  (Tim Downs, Nick of Time. Thomas Nelson, 2011)
• "You ask how long I'll love you, I'll tell you true.
  Until the 12th of Never I'll still be loving you. . . .
  I'll love you till the bluebells forget to bloom,
  I'll love you till the clover has lost its perfume,
  I'll love you till the poets run out of rhymes--
  Until the 12th of Never, and that's a long long time."
  ("The Twelfth of Never," song composed by Jerry Livingston and Paul Francis Webster; recorded by Johnny Mathis in 1957)

• "At the time, I was certain I'd sooner post my organs for auction on eBay than choose a Twitter handle."
  (Lori Deschene, Tiny Buddha: Simple Wisdom for Life's Hard Questions. Conari Press, 2011)
• "My heart bleeds for that chap Lovejoy trying to whitewash them villains. It'd turn my stomach to do a job like that. I'd sooner dig Hundred Acre Field with a hand fork, that I would!"
  (Miss Read, Village Affairs. Houghton Mifflin, 1977)
   
• "Writers--as a favor to their fellows--will write a positive blurb about any piece of trash if it serves their careers. . . . I'd sooner have my heart ripped out, and laid all fresh and bleeding on a table."
  (Sky Gilbert, Brother Dumb. ECW Press, 2007)
• "And would it have been worth it, after all,
  Would it have been worth while,
  After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
  After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
  And this, and so much more?—
  It is impossible to say just what I mean!"
  (T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917)
   
• "Dear Boswell—How shall I begin? what species of apology shall I make? the truth is, I really could not write, my spirits have been depressed so unaccountably. I have had whole mountains of lead pressing me down: you would have thought that five Dutchmen had been riding on my back, ever since I saw you; or that I had been covered with ten thousand folios of controversial divinity; you would have imagined that I was crammed in the most dense part of a plumb-pudding, or steeped in a hogshead of thick English Port. . . ."
  (Letter from Andrew Erskine to James Boswell, October 28, 1762)
   
• "[T]he rain was affecting everything and the driest of machines would have flowers popping out among their gears if they were not oiled every three days, and the threads in brocades rusted, and wet clothing would break out in a rash of saffron-colored moss. The air was so damp that fish could have come in through the doors and swum out the windows, floating through the atmosphere in the rooms."
  (Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967)
• "I was so shaken by his baseless trust in me--that such a cynical bastard as Bigfoot would make such a gesture--that I determined I'd sooner gnaw my own fingers off, gouge my eyes out with a shellfish fork, rub shit in my hair and run naked down Seventh Avenue than ever betray that trust."
  (Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential. Bloomsbury, 2000)
   
• Forms of Adynaton in Classical Greek Poetry and Drama
  "While the figure of adynaton as the reversal of the natural order was employed with restraint in Greek drama and poetry, its form was varied. The figure encompassed as its types such proverbs as counting hairs or grains of sand; such fables as the hare and the tortoise or the wolf allied with sheep; and such folkloric and poetic impossibilities as the sceptre that blooms or the pine tree that bears pears. Other motifs were derived from the observation of Nature: cosmic and astronomical impossibilities, such as the sun changing its course, the stars fading, and the sky plunging into the sea. There were also paradoxical unions, such as heaven joining hell, or day, night; human reversals, such as a man without reason; and historical examples, such as Achaeus aiding Troy."
  (Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, Petrarch's Genius: Pentimento and Prophecy. University of California Press, 1991)
   
• Adynaton in Shakespeare
  "[A] notable Shakespearian woman who deploys adynaton is Queen Margaret in Henry VI, Part 3. In the powerful denouement of this play--the onstage murder of her son and potential heir to the throne--Margaret responds with customary forthrightness:

  What's worse than mutherer, that I may name it?
  No, no, my heart will burst and if I speak,
  And I will speak, that so my heart may burst.
  Butchers and villains! Bloody cannibals!
  (Shakespeare 1974: 5.5.58-61)

  Typically for Margaret, who is a dominating presence throughout this play, her use of adynaton ('my heart will burst and if I speak') does not last long and she insists instead on naming her enemies for what they are: 'Butchers and villains! Bloody cannibals!'"
  (Huw Griffiths, "Letter-Writing Lucrece: Shakespeare in the 1590s." Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. by Jennifer Richards and Alison Thorne. Routledge, 2007)
   
• Dylan Thomas's Use of Adynaton
  Never until the mankind making
  Bird beast and flower
  Fathering and all humbling darkness
  Tells with silence the last light breaking
  And the still hour
  Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
  
  And I must enter again the round
  Zion of the water bead
  And the synagogue of the ear of corn
  Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
  Or sow my salt seed
  In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
  
  The majesty and burning of the child’s death. . . .
  (Dylan Thomas, "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London." Deaths and Entrances, 1946)
   
• Spike Milligan on Depression
  "There is this terrible emptiness. I just want to go away, disappear, cover myself up until it goes away. It is like pain yet it is not a physical pain. I cannot describe it. It is like every fibre in your body is screaming for relief yet there is no relief. How can I describe it? I cannot really."
  (Irish writer and comedian Spike Milligan, quoted by Anthony Clare in Depression and How To Survive It. Arrow Books, 1994)
   

Pronunciation: eh-dina-TON or eh-DI-neh-ton

Also Known As:impossibilia