Insurmountable means impossible or nearly impossible to overcome. When a problem is insurmountable, it's like facing a mountain so steep and tall that no one could possibly climb it.

When a challenge feels insurmountable, it seems too big to solve. A student who's missed three weeks of school might look at the pile of makeup work and feel like it's an insurmountable task. A basketball team down by 40 points in the final minutes faces what seems like an insurmountable deficit.

What seems insurmountable often isn't, though. Throughout history, people have accomplished things that others declared insurmountable. Breaking the four-minute mile seemed insurmountable until Roger Bannister did it in 1954. Climbing Mount Everest seemed insurmountable until Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit in 1953.

The word captures that feeling when something seems genuinely impossible, even if you later discover it isn't. When teammates face an insurmountable challenge, they might need to think creatively, work together differently, or accept that some goals are truly out of reach.