Citations:out of the question

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English citations of out of the question

Precursor usage[edit]

  • 1607, Robert Parker, A scholasticall Discourse against symbolizing with Antichrist in ceremonies[1]:
    That the sign of imposing hands is effectively used, is out of the question.
  • 1796, Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace[2]:
    Such is the time proposed for making a common political peace, to which no one circumstance is propitious. As to the grand principle of the peace, it is left, as if by common consent, wholly out of the question.
  • 1813, Annual Register[3]:
    But the question was, whether the excommunication issued regularly: those counts in the declaration which charged malice were out of the question, — it was neither proved nor imputed.
  • 1861, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations[4], page 110:
    Now if I could have believed that she favored Drummle with any idea of making me—me— wretched, I should have been in better heart about it; but in that habitual way of hers, she put me so entirely out of the question that I could believe nothing of the kind.