unbridgeable

American  

[uhn-brij-uh-buhl] / ˌʌnˈbrɪdʒ ə bəl /

adjective

1. not able to be crossed, joined, or closed by a bridge; extremely wide or far apart.

2. irreconcilable.

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Explanation

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

Speaking Sunday from the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV made a “heartfelt appeal to all the parties involved to assume the moral responsibility of halting the spiral of violence before it becomes an unbridgeable chasm.”

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 1, 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

Two years on, that gap remains frustratingly unbridgeable.

From BBC • Feb. 8, 2025

All human societies will have deep, perhaps even unbridgeable differences.

From Slate • Jul. 15, 2024

And even if a Neanderthal Romeo and a Sapiens Juliet fell in love, they could not produce fertile children, because the genetic gulf separating the two populations was already unbridgeable.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari