illimitable

From il- +‎ limitable.

• enPR: ĭlĭm'ĭtəbəl
• IPA^(key): /ɪˈlɪmɪtəbəl/

illimitable (comparative more illimitable, superlative most illimitable)

1. Impervious to limitation, without limit.

   Synonyms: infinite, limitless, unlimited

   Antonyms: limitable, limited

   • 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson, An Address delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday evening, 15 July, 1838:

     The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. ... This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable.

   • 1908, Helen Keller, chapter 4, in The World I Live In,‎, New York: The Century Co., page 43:

     Through the sense of touch I know […] the illimitable variety of straight and curved lines,

   • ca. 1909, Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth :

     The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall.

   • 1909, Jack London, Revolution and Other Essays: The Shrinkage of the Planet:

     What a tremendous affair it was, the world of Homer, with its indeterminate boundaries, vast regions, and immeasurable distances. The Mediterranean and the Euxine were illimitable stretches of ocean waste over which years could be spent in endless wandering.

   • 1992, Peter A. Bucky, Allen G. Weakland, quoting Albert Einstein, The private Albert Einstein, page 86:

     My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

   • 1992 September, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, “Notes: Was America a Mistake?”, in The Atlantic‎:

     That everlasting quest for new frontiers continues today as earthlings burst terrestrial bonds and begin the endless voyage beyond planet and galaxy into the illimitable dark.

   • 1996, Ella Maillart, “Foreward”, in The Alluring Target‎, Trackless Sands Press, →ISBN, page xiii:

     It may seem strange that someone in love with boats and the sea should love the deserts of Central Asia. The Takla Makan is as far from the sea as you can get. Yet, the sea and the desert are strangely similar. The illimitable expanses of both, stretching away to the horizon on all sides, can inspire exhilarating feelings of freedom, of being master of your own fate. Both the desert and the sea can also be pitiless to the lazy, the unprepared, the unwary traveler who ventures upon them. He may pay with his life for his shortcomings.

• illimitability
• illimitably

• inimitable