Word.ws English Dictionary

ask the impossible

ask the impossible verb: to request or expect something that is too difficult.

Verb

ask the impossible (third-person singular simple present asks the impossible, present participle asking the impossible, simple past and past participle asked the impossible)

  1. To request or expect something that is too difficult.
    • We ask the impossible of our law enforcement agencies, we ask the impossible of our health and rehabilitative agencies, and we confuse the public even further.1975, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act Amendments of 1975, page 199
    • To ask too much now would be to ask the impossible.2019, Miriam Focaccia, Pietro Blaserna and the Birth of the Institute of Physics in Rome, page 114

Forms of ask the impossible

third-person singular presentasks the impossible
present participleasking the impossible
past participleasked the impossible
pastasked the impossible

Questions about ask the impossible

What does ask the impossible mean?
Ask the impossible means to request or expect something that is too difficult.
What part of speech is ask the impossible?
Ask the impossible is a verb.
What is the past tense of ask the impossible?
The past tense of ask the impossible is asked the impossible.

Words near ask the impossible in the dictionary

  1. ask out
  2. ask over
  3. ask price
  4. ask prices
  5. ask round
  6. ask the impossible
  7. ask the question
  8. askability
  9. askable
  10. askal
  11. askals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ask the impossible (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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