"lack of access," 1745, from non- + access (n.). Especially in law, "impossibility of access for sexual intercourse," as when a husband is out of the country in military service or at sea longer than the time of gestation of a child. "[W]hen a husband could not, in the course of nature, by reason of his absence, have been the father of his wife's child, the child is a bastard" ["Wharton's Law Lexicon," London, 1883].