unbridgeable
AmericanExplanation
Something that's unbridgeable is hopeless — it can't be solved or made smaller, like the sometimes unbridgeable gap between two rival political parties. You'll almost always find this adjective accompanied by words like gap or divide. You might describe the unbridgeable communication gap between you and your parents or an unbridgeable difference between how much houses cost in a town and the income of most residents. A river that's too wild or prone to flooding for a bridge to cross it is quite literally unbridgeable, from the verb bridge, "build a bridge over."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Some of those eagerly sought to enlighten their charges, while a few others grew to see – or claimed to see – an unbridgeable chasm between the ivory tower and mass cultural aspiration.
From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2026
Indeed, a key reason Powell pushed back so bluntly against expectations of such a cut at the press conference that day was to manage a committee riven by seemingly unbridgeable differences.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2025
Yet the short distance between those two points is unbridgeable.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2025
What once seemed like shared ground is starting to look like an unbridgeable divide.
From Slate ● Jun. 23, 2025
The ability to make art is one of our most distinctive features, for it separates us from all other creatures across an evolutionary gap that is unbridgeable.
From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
