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-able   Listen
suffix
-able  suff.  An adjective suffix now usually in a passive sense; able to be; fit to be; expressing capacity or worthiness in a passive sense; as, movable, able to be moved; amendable, able to be amended; blamable, fit to be blamed; salable. Note: The form -ible is used in the same sense. Note: It is difficult to say when we are not to use -able instead of -ible. "Yet a rule may be laid down as to when we are to use it. To all verbs, then, from the Anglo-Saxon, to all based on the uncorrupted infinitival stems of Latin verbs of the first conjugation, and to all substantives, whencesoever sprung, we annex -able only."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"-able" Quotes from Famous Books



... (Adelung, iii. A, 102, 138).]—"At Regensburg, once across, Seckendorf with his Bavarians calls halt; plants himself down in Kelheim, Ingolstadt, and the safe Garrisons thereabouts,—calculates that, if Khevenhuller should be called away Prag-ward, there may be a stroke do-able in these parts. Saxe marches on; straight northward now, up the Valley of the Naab; obliged to be a good deal on his guard. Mischievous Tolpatcheries and Trencks, ever since he crossed the Donau again, have escorted him, to right, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... unlovely features in Annette's character, and Annette really seemed like an anomalous contradiction. There was a duality about her nature as if the blood of two races were mingling in her veins. To some persons Annette was loving and love-able, bright, intelligent, obliging and companionable; to others, unsociable, unamiable and repelling. Her heart was like a harp which sent out its harmonious discords in accordance with the moods of the player who touched its chords. To some who swept them it gave out tender and touching ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... and his wonderment at the settled and established "Oh, I stipulated that there shouldn't be any newness—any 'smell of paint,' so to speak. Here are the stables; I had them put as far from the house as possible, and yet get-at-able. Most men like to stroll about them. I hope you'll like them. Mr. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... had often been in the drawing-room alone and gazed admiringly at the treasures without ever dreaming of examining them more closely. I had never even wished to do so, any more than one wishes to handle the moon or stars or any other un-get-at-able objects. But now, unfortunately, the idea was suggested, it had been put into my head, and there it stayed. I walked round the room gazing in at the cupboards in turn—the book ones did not particularly attract me—long ago I had read, over ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... "They are admire-able in lots of ways," Rose-Ellen answered. "I never knew anyone I liked much better than Nico. And the Mexicans are the very best in all the art work at the vacation school. I think the Japanese ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... street, quite dead through the Sunday dinner-hour, presently took on. Young couples with their progeny began to appear, returning from the weekly reunion Sunday dinner with relatives; young people meditative (until they reached the Pike Mansion), the wives fanning themselves or shooing the tots-able-to-walk ahead of them, while the husbands, wearing long coats, satin ties, and showing dust upon their blazing shoes, invariably pushed the perambulators. Most of these passers-by exchanged greetings with Mamie and Eugene, and all of them looked hard at ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... been taught to believe are the only things that vitally affect their savings; that while they imagine they understand the system by which speculation and investments are controlled and worked, and that the causes and effects of this system are at all times get-at-able by them through their bankers and their brokers; there is a tangible, complicated, yet simple trick of financial legerdemain, operated twenty-four hours in each day in the year, and which the press, the books, the politicians, and the statesmen never touch upon—a trick by ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... sweetly that I might have her (plum and all) whenever I could badger my grand-uncle Rumgudgeon, into the necessary consent. Poor girl!—she was barely fifteen, and without this consent, her little amount in the funds was not come-at-able until five immeasurable summers had "dragged their slow length along." What, then, to do? At fifteen, or even at twenty-one (for I had now passed my fifth olympiad) five years in prospect are very much the same as five hundred. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... is past endurance. He has not tried a bit: I have seen him lately with his book before him, dreaming about some wonderful story of some enchanted ass, or some giantess Mamouka, I suppose; or imagining some new ode to some incomprehensible, un-come-at-able Dulcinea. He is always shutting himself up in his air-castles, and expecting that dry Latin and Greek, and other such miserable ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... which the spirit Uapa rises is more holy, and that he is small, and resides in a chasm in a rock whose declivity can only be passed by means of bush ropes, and in the wet season he is not get-at-able at all. He will, if given suitable offerings, reveal the future to Bubis, but Bubis only. His priest is the King of all the Bubis, upon whom it is never permitted to a white man, or a Porto, to gaze. Baumann also gives the residence of another important ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... second set; among the most come-at-able of whom were Mrs. and Miss Bates, and Mrs. Goddard, three ladies almost always at the service of an invitation from Hartfield, and who were fetched and carried home so often, that Mr. Woodhouse thought it no hardship for either ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... interpretation of, or rather by a deviation from, the act of settlement; in which it is expressly ordained, that the commissions of the judge? should continue in force quamdiu se bene gesserint; that their salaries should be fixed, and none of them remove-able but by an address of both houses of parliament. It was then, without all doubt, the intention of the legislature that every judge should enjoy his office during life, unless convicted, by legal trial, of some misbehaviour, or unless both houses of parliament should concur in desiring ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... of that time, and know England from end to end; but now I seem to have got into a backwater, and I find that I travel farther, and see more, than I did when I was hardly for a week together in the same place. But that's reason-able enough, if you think of it. If you can do with-out time, space goes with it. If it don't matter when you are, it don't ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... the homemaker's discrimination. The quality of this table should be at least equal to the best we have to show. Whether it shall be squared, or oblong with oval ends, depends upon tastes; by all means it should be get-at-able. That's what a library table is for. Good designs in "arts and crafts" may be had as low as $16.50 in a small size; 72-inch, about $50. Golden oak costs less, ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... here, at all events," he replied; and murmuring absently, Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible writing-able. In ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score or so disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an absorption almost passionate. I might have been in Boeotia, for any consciousness he had of me. So ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... Origin of the Name.—Among the able notes, or the not-able Queries of a recent Number, (I regret that I have it not at hand, for an exact quotation), a learned correspondent mentioned, en passant, that the word bacon had the obsolete signification of "dried wood." As a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... after his death: one collection of eight octavo volumes of manuscript containing the attacks upon Christianity, by which he intended his name to be transmitted to posterity, were all arranged ready for publication as his posthumous works. To ensure their credit-able appearance, and to reward a man whom he had thought worthy of confidence, and one who professed to be a disciple of Collins, he bequeathed them to Des Maizeaux, then a popular author and editor. He had edited the correspondence of Locke and Collins, written the lite of Bayle, and subsequently ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... to discover whether the offer of an honour-able love would be displeasing to his master's sister, a lady of the most illustrious lineage in Flanders, who had been twice widowed, and was a woman of muck spirit. Meeting with a reply contrary to his desires, he attempted ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... the right to get married. Accordingly, the birth of a girl is not a joy, but a sorrow, especially if her parents are not rich. She must be married not later than when she is seven or eight; a little girl of ten is an old maid in India, she is a discredit to her parents and is the miser-able butt of all her more ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... to Old St. John's after lunch," said Anne. "I don't know that a graveyard is a very good place to go to get cheered up, but it seems the only get-at-able place where there are trees, and trees I must have. I'll sit on one of those old slabs and shut my eyes and imagine ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... man should keep his money where it is get-at-able, and when hard times come and the prices go away down to low water mark, then he should buy. Later on prosperity will return, as sure as the sun will rise, and the things bought during the hard times will greatly ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... have to sit and look at a problem without the least idea of how to solve it; or to find that the dates and facts which ought to have been at their finger-ends had departed to distant and un-get-at-able realms of ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Peter," continued Katy, "like your pa used to study things under his microscope. He's the most come-at-able man. He's got such a kind of a questionin' look on his face, and there's a bit of a stoop to his shoulders like they had been whittled out for carryin' a load, and there's a kind of a whimsy quiverin' around his lips that ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... houses—tell 'em they are chock-full of British troops. Then they'll fairly let loose the bow-yows of war. Damme, how their gunners will gun! Oblige me by thinking of four hundred guns, pumping val-u-able shells into ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither, indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix, else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised pronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there is a general tendency among ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... aware that it needed something more than a mere shipwreck to rob us of our appetite, for we found ourselves rapidly developing a good, wholesome hunger; but, alas! there were no means of appeasing it, for the schooner was full of water and everything in the nature of provisions was quite un-get-at-able: we should therefore be obliged to wait for a meal until we could get ashore, which, we decided, could scarcely be until the afternoon, if even then. And we soon came to the conclusion that our companions ashore were in like case with ourselves, so far at least as hunger was concerned, for about ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... not explain wherein the sense, "seemingly enforced by the next line," consists. May the true word be "a sable"—that is, a black fox, hunted for its precious fur? Or "at-able,"—as we ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... says th' Sultan, stuffin' th' loose change into his shoe. 'Th' house is pulled,' says th' captain. 'Ye'er license is expired. Ye'd betther come peaceful,' he says. An' they bust in th' dure an' th' Sultan puts a shirt an' a couple iv collars into a grip an' selicts iliven iv his least formid-able wives to go along with him an' they put on their bonnets an' shawls an' carry out their bur-rd cages an' their goold fish an' their fancy wurruk an' th' pathrol wagon starts off an' has to stop so that iliven iv thim can go ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... out, worship," said the other. "Belike you think me a sorry dog not to make fight of this. But the old knight, look you, is not come-at-able. I threw one of his varlets into a thorn hedge, and another into a water-butt, and a third landed head-first into a ditch. But I couldn't do any ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden



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