entry
infeasible
/ˌɪnˈfiːzəbəl/impractical; not capable of being done
From Latin in- (not) + French feasible (able to be done).
Word Ancestry
The neat little insult here is a double lock: first the negative Latin in-, then the idea of something that can actually be done. Put them together and you get a word that shuts the door on a plan before the plan even reaches the stage of moving furniture. English picked it up in the 1530s, when scholars loved wearing Latin like a lawyer’s robe, and French had already been playing with infaisable. That same little negative prefix shows up in invisible, irregular, and inevitable, while the underlying notion of 'feasible' is all about making, doing, and getting a thing over the finish line. If feasible is the green light, infeasible is the engineer staring at the blueprint and muttering, 'Nope—this bridge will not survive Tuesday.'
The Story
The neat little insult here is a double lock: first the negative Latin in-, then the idea of something that can actually be done. Put them together and you get a word that shuts the door on a plan before the plan even reaches the stage of moving furniture. English picked it up in the 1530s, when scholars loved wearing Latin like a lawyer’s robe, and French had already been playing with infaisable. That same little negative prefix shows up in invisible, irregular, and inevitable, while the underlying notion of 'feasible' is all about making, doing, and getting a thing over the finish line. If feasible is the green light, infeasible is the engineer staring at the blueprint and muttering, 'Nope—this bridge will not survive Tuesday.'
Kin & Kindred
From 'in-'·not; opposite of; without
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From 'feasible'·able to be done; workable
Derived Terms
English words from this root