unprocurable

comparative more unprocurable · superlative most unprocurable

1. Unable to be procured.

   It is clear, for instance, in Central Africa, where copper and tin were unprocurable, that man must first have used iron.

   1884, Richard F[rancis] Burton, “The Proto-Sideric or Early Iron Age of Weapons”, in The Book of the Sword, London: Chatto and Windus, […], →OCLC, page 98

   3 more examples

   We have been told in many plaintive articles and letters in the London press that servants nowadays are almost unprocurable, and even the best people are having to shut up part of their houses and live in one floor, and so on.

   1917 June 1, “(please specify the article title)”, in The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC

   Diodorus Siculus bears out this, and states that the goat was made a god on account of its genital member and lasciviousness. Where a goat was unprocurable, the image of a human phallus of extravagent [sic] dimensions was erected in the temple and worshipped.

   1941, George Ryley Scott, Phallic Worship: A History of Sex and Sex Rites in Relation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the Present Day, London: T. Werner Laurie, page 29

   But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick or certain poison, were completely unprocurable.

   1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001

   Synonyms: unobtainable · Antonyms: obtainable, procurable

plural unprocurables

1. Something that cannot be procured.