untenable

untenable
adjective
un·;ten·;a·;ble ;;n-;te-n;-b;l
Synonyms of untenable
1
: not able to be defended
an untenable position
2
: not able to be occupied
untenable apartments
untenability
;;n-;te-n;-;bi-l;-t;
 noun


Did you know?
Untenable and its opposite tenable come to us from the Old French verb tenir ("to hold, have possession of"), and ultimately from the Latin verb ten;re ("to hold, occupy, possess"). We tend to use untenable in situations where an idea or position is so off base that holding onto it is unjustified or inexcusable. One way to hold onto the meaning of untenable is to associate it with other ten;re descendants whose meanings are associated with "holding" or "holding onto." Tenacious ("holding fast") is one example. Others are contain, detain, sustain, maintain, and retain. Spanish speakers may also recognize ten;re as a predecessor of the commonplace verb tener, which retains the meaning of "to hold or possess."

Examples of untenable in a Sentence
The Agriculture Department is in an untenable position. With the two hats that it wears—one to protect consumer health and the other to help farmers sell food—it cannot tell us to eat fewer calories. After all, fewer calories generally mean less food, which would fly in the face of the department's mandate to help farmers.
—Marian Burros, New York Times, 14 Aug. 2002
But scholars are citizens, too, and if it is wrongheaded to demand political payoff from basic research, it would be equally untenable to demand that research be quarantined from the real-world considerations that weigh so heavily upon us.
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York Times, 4 Apr. 1998
All the theories of the Moon's origin proposed before the Apollo Moon landings of 1969 … became untenable when the rocks returned from the Moon proved to be as old as the Earth and significantly dissimilar.
—Physics Today, January 1997
The problem was then resolved—not by finding that the conduct in question was justified, because that would have offended the judge's sense of order, and not by rejecting the applicability of the defense, which would have led to a reportable opinion and an appeal—but through a dismissal of the charges on the wholly untenable ground that the prosecution had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
—Edward N. Costikyan, New York Times Book Review, 13 Mar. 1988
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
For 30-year-old Chisinau resident Iuliana, who did not want to give her surname, power outages would prevent her from doing her online job, which could also be untenable if the heating goes off in the middle of winter in the country of about 2.5 million people.
—Stephen McGrath and Aurel Obreja, Los Angeles Times, 31 Dec. 2024
But with the American people’s eyes squarely on them, their current approach is increasingly untenable.
—Raja Krishnamoorthi, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2024
If anything, manually managing these environments has become untenable.
—Jody Brazil, Forbes, 17 Dec. 2024
The countless combinations of chemicals, polymers, and colors in every county and city make the sorting and recycling process financially untenable and technically unviable.
—Michael Shank, Baltimore Sun, 1 Nov. 2024

Word History
Etymology
un- entry 1 + tenable

First Known Use
1647, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of untenable was in 1647
See more words from the same year