out of the question
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Completely impossible or unacceptable
Literally: not a matter to be considered
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Apartment rents in most major cities in the US are astronomical, and hotel costs are virtually out of the question.
It is a relatively small basement room, so a large imposing piece was out of the question.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “out of the question” mean?
Completely impossible or unacceptable Literally: not a matter to be considered
Is “out of the question” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.