Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Immune to attack; impregnable.
  • adjective Impossible to damage, injure, or wound.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not vulnerable; incapable of being wounded, hurt, or harmed.
  • Hence Not to be damaged or injuriously affected by attack: as, invulnerable arguments or evidence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Incapable of being wounded, or of receiving injury.
  • adjective Unanswerable; irrefutable; that can not be refuted or convinced.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Incapable of being wounded, or of receiving injury; not vulnerable.
  • adjective Unanswerable; irrefutable; unable to be damaged by an attack or convinced; as, an invulnerable argument.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective immune to attack; impregnable

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French invulnérable, from Old French, from Latin invulnerābilis : in-, not; see in– + vulnerāre, to wound (from vulnus, vulner-, wound; see vulnerable).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin invulnerābilis, from vulnerābilis, from vulnerō ("I wound"), from vulnus ("wound").

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Examples

  • The more invulnerable the Empire is, the more invulnerable is Canada.

    Canadian Assimilation 1913

  • The mystic is, in short, invulnerable, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed.

    The Varieties of Religious Experience 1902

  • The riveting actor, best known as the invulnerable RoboCop, has brilliantly hit the skids as Stan Liddy, a corrupt Miami PD officer who gets busted by Internal Affairs.

    Cheers & Jeers: All's (Peter) Weller on Dexter 2010

  • He might have been called the invulnerable dwarf of the fray.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • Ianni points also to studies of so-called invulnerable adolescents -- those who develop into stable young adults in spite of coming from troubled homes, or other adversity.

    A Much Riskier Passage 2008

  • Its technology is so new, so revolutionary, that everyone assumes its so-called invulnerable defences will be impenetrable.

    The White Ninja Lustbader, Eric 1990

  • He might have been called the invulnerable dwarf of the fray.

    Les Miserables, Volume V, Jean Valjean 1862

  • He might have been called the invulnerable dwarf of the fray.

    Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1843

  • The presence of an "invulnerable" nation among nations that are "vulnerable" means inevitable aggression and war, a perpetual menace to civilisation and humanity.

    Essays in War-Time Further Studies in the Task of Social Hygiene Havelock Ellis 1899

  • Still, its effects upon this "invulnerable" god were of a marked order.

    The Ivory Child Henry Rider Haggard 1890

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