October 03, 2009
- impasse (noun)
- \IM-pass\
- What does it mean?
- : a situation from which it seems impossible to escape; especially : deadlock
- How do you use it?
- When one team walked off the field in protest, the championship game was at an impasse and couldn't go on.
- Are you a word wiz?
"Impasse" was borrowed into English in the 1850s, not long before the start of the American Civil War. Which of these other terms do you think first appeared in our language at about the same time as "impasse"?
The verb "mooch" (meaning "to wander about" or "to beg"), the noun "folktale" (meaning "a timeless story circulated orally among a people"), and "boogeyman" (meaning "a monstrous imaginary figure") all began appearing in English texts during the 1850s. "Jack-o'-lantern," "humbug," and "slobber" have been around since the 1750s; "energetic," "gigantic," and "spindly" are older still, dating from the 1650s. But "billboard," "snowblower," and "nerd" are more recent -- they've only been used in English since the 1950s.
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