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Workable   /wˈərkəbəl/   Listen
Workable

adjective
1.
Capable of being done with means at hand and circumstances as they are.  Synonyms: executable, feasible, practicable, viable.






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"Workable" Quotes from Famous Books



... without breaking its heart or shaking its nerve. It is the difficulty produced by the loose foundation or the vague scheme that breaks the heart—when a luckless fatuity has over-persuaded an author of the "saving" virtue of treatment. Being "treated" is never, in a workable idea, a mere passive condition, and I hold no subject ever susceptible of help that isn't, like the embarrassed man of our proverbial wisdom, first of all able to help itself. I was thus to have here an envious glimpse, in carrying my design through, of that artistic rage and that artistic felicity ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... forth their normal effects. Wherever there is religion men will be associated, and their worship and their work will be carried on under forms of social organization. Anarchism is no more thinkable or workable in religion than ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... Ireland Bill having been recommitted, Sir WORTHINGTON EVANS explained the Government's expedient for providing the new Irish Parliaments with Second Chambers. Frankly admitting that the Cabinet had been unable to evolve a workable scheme—an elected Senate would fail to protect the minority and a nominated Senate would be "undemocratic"—he proposed that the Council of Ireland should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various

... duties, cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and darkness; and, in short, to make human actions as harmonious as were all the ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... rearing, terrified creature circled round him and then the rope began to shorten to a more workable length. There was no haste, no flurry. Surely and steadily the rope shortened (but the horse went to the man not the man to the horse; that was to come later). With the shortening of the rope the compelling power of the man's will forced ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... second time a male emerges and makes a round of exploration. A bore is made in workable earth, close beside the brick. This is a trial excavation, to reveal the nature of the soil; a narrow well, of no great depth, into which the insect plunges to half its length. The well-sinker returns to the other workers, who ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... available information, however, as to how these theories can be reduced to actual practice. The Western Forestry and Conservation Association believes it can render no more practical service than by being the first to outline for public use definite workable methods of forest management ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... necessarily different in different kinds of forests and under different economic conditions. All that the Forester knows must here be applied, and applied in workable fashion, not only to the forest, but to the men who use the forest. This is peculiarly true of the practice of forestry in National ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot

... restlessly. "Perhaps not. But I had planned to live in Vienna. He would spend only a part of the year there with me. His own interests are here, of course. It would be a perfectly workable arrangement." ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... medium, and that it was impossible to regard the materialized form as but a phantasm of the living. A stupendous discovery or a pitiful figment of a lunatic brain! But no flash of lightning rent the halls of learning; Sir William Crookes' researches into radiant matter could safely be accepted as workable intellectual ground, but not his researches ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... private property in wagons, and public property in roads; private property in houses, and public property in forests; private property in automobiles, and public property in railway carriages. But any rule of property, like any other workable human law, must be applicable to all individuals that meet ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... occupations kept them busy for an entire week, during which they saw no sign of human presence on the river; and by the time that all was finished the bows had dried into prime condition, and Dick found, to his amazement, that the wood which, when first cut, had been soft and workable as cheese, had become as hard as iron, tough, elastic, and extraordinarily strong; that it had, in short, become perfect for ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... have paralleled in general the political and cultural revival, but, as in any mining region, the exhaustion of easily workable surface deposits marked a critical point, when the necessity of deeper mining led to the construction of supported tunnels and the introduction of machinery for removing ores and water from deep mines. On the basis ...
— Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later • Robert P. Multhauf

... by an up-and-down motion of a lever controlled by an electro-magnet. It is easy to befog an issue by misstating facts, but the facts are here to speak for themselves, and that Morse temporarily abandoned his first idea, because he had not the means at his disposal to embody it in workable form and had recourse to another method for producing practically the same result, only shows wonderful ingenuity on his part. It can easily be seen that the waving line traced by ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... the other for war purposes. The former averaged from eight to ten feet, whilst the latter varied from ten to fourteen feet in length; the blade in each case, however, consisting either of bone or stone, with a shaft of some light hard wood. Metals were, of course, perfectly unknown as workable materials. The war-spear was not hurled javelin-fashion like the hunting-spear, but propelled by means of a wommerah, which, in reality, was a kind of sling, perhaps twenty-four inches long, with a hook at one end to fix on the shaft of the spear. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... brief through twice, thought it over well, and could make little of it. It was perfectly obvious to him that there had been foul play somewhere, but he found himself quite unable to form a workable hypothesis. Was the person who had been seen running away concerned in the matter?—if it was a person. If so, was he the author of the footprints? Of course the ex-lawyer's clerk had something to do with it, but what? In vain did Geoffrey ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... blades. There was a good trade, too, in turtle-backs." The Tallega poked about in the loose earth at the top of the mound and brought up a round, flattish flint about the size of a man's hand, that showed disk-shaped flakings arranged like the marking of a turtle-shell. "They were kept workable by being buried in the earth, and made into knives or razors or ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... exhibition. In conclusion, it may be said that the present volume contains many precious relics of the Bewick, Newbury, Goldsmith, Newcastle York, Banbury, Coventry, and Catnach presses, and a representative collection of the stock of workable woodcuts of a provincial printer in the latter part of the 18th century, and to those who would like to inspect the rentable copies of those valuable and interesting little books, and some of the original Horn Books, etc., let them see the Coleridge, Kenneth ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson

... and justice in the dealings of nations with one another. The brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair but empty phrase; it must be given a structure of force and reality. The nations must realize their common life and effect a workable partnership to secure that life against the aggressions of ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... time. It swept away the cobwebs. It gave you a measure, a standard, whereby to compute earthly affairs. Another landmark passed; another milestone on the road to enlightenment. That period of doubt was over. His values had righted themselves. He had carved out new and sound ones; a workable, up-to-date theory of life. He was in fine trim. His liver—he forgot that he ever had one. Nepenthe had done him good all round. And he knew exactly what he wanted. A return to the Church, for example, was out of the question. His sympathies had outgrown the ideals of that establishment; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... (pleaded the pipe) in the charter of that kingdom—in the sunshiny Sermon on the Mount. It is no fanciful conception of an intangible order of things, but a practical, workable code of daily life, adapted to any stage of civilisation, and delivered to men and women who, even according to the showing of hopeless pessimists, or strenuous advocates for Individualistic force and cunning, were in all respects like ourselves— delivered, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... which the various States formed their first constitutions and the ease with which they corrected errors by substituting later frames, is an additional proof of their early efficiency. No State had as much difficulty as did the nation in reaching a workable basis. It is true that the national Congress first suggested State governments to the chaotic colonies, but they did not authorise them. The colonies looked to the nation for a uniform suggestion, but neither for sanction nor permission. Never for a ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... for two days endeavouring to frame a workable quarantine scheme in respect of an outbreak of lung sickness amongst the natives' cattle in several of those deep valleys which cleave the Xomlenzi range from the Northern bank of the Tina River, and it was late in afternoon ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... Workable Method. The teacher can apply it. Give every pupil a certain definite Search task. The teacher can adapt it to every age, and to every degree of Biblical knowledge. This series of text books will suggest plans of applying this basic method of Bible study in becoming acquainted with the ...
— A Bird's-Eye View of the Bible - Second Edition • Frank Nelson Palmer

... design," "mechanical," "unfelt," "ill-organised," "sensitive,"—is given, what such terms sometimes lack, a definite meaning. In a word, my hypothesis works; that is unusual: to some it has seemed not only workable but true; that is ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... of some of our greatest authors have still to be made, and it is to be hoped that all those who have the cause of bibliography at heart will join to remedy the great evil. It would be quite possible to compile a really national work by a system of co-operation such as was found workable in the case of the Philological Society's Dictionary of the English Language. Sub-editors of the different letters might be appointed, and to them all titles could be sent. When the question of printing arose, it would be well to commence with the chief authors. These ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... best, though they will grow in any fairly good dry ground. The position should be open, but at the same time sheltered, as the blossoms are liable to be cut off by spring frosts. The planting may be done at any time during November and the beginning of March, when the ground is in a workable condition. Cherries are often worked upon the Mahaleb stock. As they have a tendency to gumming and canker, the knife should be used as little as possible, but where pruning is necessary, let it be done in the summer. If gumming occurs, cut away the diseased parts and apply ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... answered. "Scattered among the cranks and castle builders were several brilliant, solid-headed men. There was Moses G. Farmer, for example, one of the foremost electricians of that time, who had many an excellent and workable idea and who taught young Watson no end of valuable lessons. Then one day into the workshop came Alexander Graham Bell. In his hand he carried a mechanical contrivance Watson had previously made for him and on espying Tom in the distance he made a direct line for the workman's bench. After ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... woman suffragist takes it as a matter of course that she would herself be able to construct a system of workable laws. In point of fact, the framing of a really useful law is a question of divining something which will apply to an infinite number of different cases and individuals. It is an intellectual feat on a par with the framing ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... constrained from embarking in the first available boat, and was only deterred by Fred's assurance that he had a plan in his head which was only workable by themselves twain. ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... which iron is thus capable of being applied, renders it of more use to mankind than all the other metals combined. Unlike iron, gold is found pure, and in an almost workable state; and at an early period in history, it seems to have been much more plentiful than iron or steel. But gold was unsuited for the purposes of tools, and would serve for neither a saw, a chisel, an axe, nor a sword; whilst tempered steel could answer all these purposes. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... world needs food. Food is the greatest safeguard—I would almost say the only safeguard—against anarchy and chaos. Then, I want to learn by experience; to prove by my own demonstrations that my theories are workable—or that they're not. And then, most of all, I love the prairies and the open life. It's my whim, and I ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... muffins in the other, and then search blankly for a third hand to eat them with. Now he has solved the problem. He turns in his toes and brings his knees together; then he folds his napkin into a long, narrow wedge that fills the crack between them, thus forming a very workable pseudo lap; after that he sits with tense muscles until the tea is drunk. I suppose I ought to provide a table, but the spectacle of Sandy with his toes turned in is the one gleam of amusement that my ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... workable constitution was ever written exclusively by scholars. Recall the ordinance for the government of Carolina devised by the philosopher Locke. It failed; yet it reads well. Time and again theorists with highest purpose and broadest book wisdom ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... reconnaissance and plans of advance. American officers and doughboys had their first experiences, of the many experiences to follow, of taking out Russian guides and from their own observations and the crude old maps and from doubtful hearsay to piece together a workable military sketch of the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... Beir, and Mr. Henry E. Marquand—who were known to be favourable to the project was held, several handsome subscriptions were promised, Mr. Guille renewed his offer previously made to The Farmers' Club, and a workable ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... practically the basis of all modern capitalistic prosperity? Such theories as were now being advocated here would spread to other cities unless checked. America might readily become anti-capitalistic—socialistic. Public ownership might appear as a workable theory—and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... Reynolds, Esq., of Bristol, so distinguished for his unbounded benevolence, was the original proprietor of the great iron-works in Colebrook Dale, Shropshire. Owing, I believe, partly to the exhaustion of the best workable beds of coal and ironstone, and partly to the superior advantages possessed by the iron-founders in South Wales, the works at Colebrook Dale were finally relinquished, a short time before the death of Mr. Reynolds. With a natural attachment to the scenes where he had passed his early ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... formation is the great and important series of the Carboniferous Rocks, so called because workable beds of coal are more commonly and more largely developed in this formation than in any other. Workable coal-seams, however, occur in various other formations (Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary), so that coal ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... bridge, a flash from his carbine would bring his comrades across in time to join the others who were watching that trail. It had, as usual with Stimson's schemes, all been carefully thought out, and the plan was eminently workable, but unfortunately for the grizzled sergeant a better brain than his ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... explanations; but Prester Kleig knew. Maniel believed he could do it, but he needed two hours in which to perfect his theory and make it workable. Kleig knew that had he been able to do it in two years, or two decades, it still would have been in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... the extra-sensory perception formula? Yes, we do; all eight of us remember it well. It was based on faulty premises, and incomplete, of course; but in its own way it was workable enough. We have ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett

... make the experiment more simple and workable at all temperatures, a sample of coal was selected, which should be perfectly manageable and readily consumed. Appended is an analysis of the coal employed (from Ebbw ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... subordinate personage may be worth his place in the Tabagie, should his function happen to prove necessary there. Even book-men, though generally pedants and mere bags of wind and folly, are good for something, more especially if rich mines of quizzability turn out to be workable in them. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... have the passage from mere youth to manhood, with its wider, calmer views, and its patience, inclusiveness, and mild, genial acceptance of types that before did not come, and could not by any effort of will be brought, within range or made to adhere consistently with what was already accepted and workable. He was less the egotist now and more the realist. He was not so prone to the high lights in which all seems overwrought, exaggerated; concerned really with effects of a more subdued order, if still the theme was a wee out of ordinary nature. Enough is ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... one of the farmers near by tethered his cow on the school grounds during the summer. One of the girls gave a workable solution for this problem. This was it: the boys should come back in relays all summer long and keep the grass so short that no cow could get a nibble from their new lawn. This was done and ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... first, but eventually yielded because he believed his friend's interest would need looking after in his absence. After some discussion they agreed on a workable scheme, which was put down in writing and witnessed by the hotel-keeper. Then Jernyngham borrowed a saddle and sent ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... episode has never been made public. The practical result was that after a period of extreme tension between China and Japan which was expected to lead to war, that political genius, the late Prince Ito, managed to calm things down and arrange workable modus vivendi. Yuan Shih-kai, who had gone to Tientsin to report in person to Li Hung Chang, returned to Seoul triumphantly in October, 1885, as Imperial Resident. He was then twenty-eight years old; he had come to the front, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... General Hume had no opinion. He merely expressed himself as being prepared to accept any sound theory, or portions of such theories as might be advanced, and arrive at a workable conclusion therefrom. Which was exactly what ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... themselves are composed of various qualities of chalk; some of such a hard, smooth and workable material that, as will be seen presently, the columns in some of the Downland churches are made from this native "rock." While the upper strata is soft and contains great quantities of flints, the middle layers are brittle and ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... important truth 1 have laboured to impress them, and I hope successfully. It is this: that the faithful carrying out of the principles of Constitutional Government is a departure from the American model, not an approximation to it, and, therefore, a departure from republicanism in its only workable shape. Of the soundness of this view of our case I entertain no doubt whatever; and though I meet with few persons to whom it seems to have occurred (for the common belief of superficial observers is that we are republicanising ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... confidence. "If that's all you've got to say, my dear sir, it wouldn't be fair of me to make money terms with you. I won't discuss my price in the matter till I've some reason to believe this idea of yours is workable." ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... few centuries Christian and Muslim lived together upon a fairly workable basis of toleration. Massacres of Christians and destruction of their churches occurred periodically, either in revenge for Christian successes elsewhere, or in connexion with other Mussulman disorders ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... fouled by the sailing ships; the six-pounder methodically perforating the steamer from bow to stern; the steamer's 1-in. gun and the rifles from the sailing ships raking everything and everybody else; E12's coxswain on the conning-tower passing up ammunition; and E12's one workable motor developing "slight defects" at, of course, the moment when power ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... agitation, was at the moment in clear practical relation to labour movements all over the country, and had in fact gained greatly in significance and interest since it was first heard of in public, owing to events of current history. Workable proposals—a moderate tone—and the appearance, at any rate, of harmony and a united front among the representatives of labour—if so much at least could be attained to-night, both Wharton and Bennett believed that not only the cause itself, but the importance of the Labour party in the House ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and undignified proceeding on the part of a strong Government," he said, "to come down with proposal they know to be wholly inadequate, and to hint that we ought to assist them in converting it into a practical and workable measure." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... boy should have simple, workable rules for living. A boy ought to take a good soap bath at least twice a week and always after he has played a hard game or performed work of a nature that has caused him to ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... with art, the unpremeditated. Above all, here, for the snatched instants, they could breathe so near to each other that the interval was almost engulfed in it, and the intensity both of the union and the caution became a workable substitute for contact. They had prolongations of instants that counted as visions of bliss; they had slow approximations that counted as long caresses. The quality of these passages, in truth, made the spoken word, and especially the spoken word about other people, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... feeling, by wear and tear, violence, monotony. These limitations upon our access to that environment combine with the obscurity and complexity of the facts themselves to thwart clearness and justice of perception, to substitute misleading fictions for workable ideas, and to deprive us of adequate checks upon those ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... tree[1], and especially its fine roots, produce a variegated cabinet wood of much beauty, but of such extreme hardness as scarcely to be workable by any ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... that, dear; you must just tell me what is in your mind, and be satisfied with my decision. The only thing that I can assure you beforehand is that if it is a workable scheme, and likely to give you great pleasure, I will do my best to ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... but it is still very much "in the air." It is to a great extent as yet only in a gaseous condition, vague and nebulous, and so not leading to the practical results, both individual and collective, which might be expected of it, if it were consolidated into a more workable form. We are like some amateurs who want to paint finished pictures before they have studied the elements of Art, and when they see an artist do without difficulty what they vainly attempt, they look upon him as a being specially favoured by ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... unlearnt." {69c} He recognised the possibilities that lay in every man, only awaiting the hour when they should be called forth. He believed implicitly in the power of the will. {69d} He possessed ambition and a fine workable theory of how success was to be obtained; but he lacked initiative. He expected fortune to wait for him on the high-road, just as he knew adventures awaited him. He would not go "across the country," to use a phrase ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... erudition and research has been expended on this question; but most of those who have dealt with it have been classical scholars possessing little or no practical acquaintance with seafaring conditions, and none of their proposed arrangements of three banks of oars looks at all likely to be workable and effective. A practical test of the theory was made by Napoleon III when his "History of Julius Caesar" was being prepared. He had a trireme constructed and tried upon the Seine. There were three banks of oars, but though the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... that it has been clipped of all its youthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal—why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful vision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the will of the majority, why not? With the same political cunning and shrewdness the mass is petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praise is being sung in many keys: the poor majority, the outraged, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... be remembered; and keen interest alone, or careful attention at the time of introduction of the new, and repetition of the thing to be retained, with a will which holds the attention fast, will assure a good, workable ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... was not, as some think, the first. He himself catalogued fully a thousand books on his topic. But he brought order into it; he took what was good and, rejecting the false, fashioned it into a workable system. In the mere matter of nomenclature, his way of calling plants, like men, by a family name and a given name wrought a change hard to appreciate in our day. The common blue grass of our lawns, for instance, he called, and ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... Oriental faiths have no organization; there is no head of Hinduism, Buddhism, or hardly of Mohammedanism. There are no missions, but religion grows rankly from a rich soil, so the boy wrote three demands: a reasonable theory of the universe, a workable and working code of conduct, and a promise of something desirable hereafter. So he read books and tried ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... decisions of the Children's Courts might be usefully made explicit in the Child Welfare Act. We agree also that it might be well to provide for the right of appeal against the Superintendent in certain circumstances. If the system is to be workable and not brought to a standstill by a mass of frivolous appeals, it will be necessary to restrict the right of appeal. If an appeal were to lie every time the Superintendent shifted a ward of State, the proceedings would be endless. The only appeal, we think, should be one to have a child discharged ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie

... Icelandic Republic, without coercive authority or provision for the common defense, and without a sense of subordination or collective responsibility among its citizens, would be out of all question under existing circumstances of politics and international trade. Nor would such a commonwealth be workable on the scale and at the pace imposed by modern industrial and commercial conditions, even apart from international jealousy and ambitions, provided the sacred rights of ownership were to be maintained in something like their current shape. And ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... Discovery's crew was far behind the old Northern expeditions; and it was this fact that made Scott decide, in arranging a sledge equipment where men and not dogs would do most of the haulage, to divide his parties into the smallest workable units. The old Northern plan had allowed for parties of at least eight, who, having a common tent and cooking arrangements, could not be subdivided. Scott's plan was not necessarily to limit the number of men in ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... is scattered among an enormous number of holders, are safe from any attempts to establish a monopoly to control their price through the control of their production. Other metals, however, which are like silver and gold in being found in workable deposits at but a few points on the globe but are there found in abundance, are peculiarly adapted to facilitate the schemes of monopolists. Of lead, copper, zinc, and tin, we require a steady supply for use in the various arts; and the statement has been made that the supply of each one of ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... America has gone. It was prophetic of a more perfectly organized society. In the days of the kitty the fine Socialistic ideal of, "From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs," was made specific and workable. And the inspiring romantic tradition of Robin Hood was also carried over into modern life. The kitty robbed only the rich and left the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... the voluntary system of training seamen. Had he done this, it is pretty certain they would have guided him clear of the difficulties he got into, and his measure would have been fashioned into a beneficent, workable scheme instead of proving ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... like it." He threw his match aside, and walked to his machine. "I tell you, sir," he said, "there isn't a big Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't got at least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and manoeuvring to find out what the others have got. I tell you, sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an unaccredited native, can't get within four miles of Lydd nowadays—not to mention our ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... land and water for a distance of 2,000 miles, and found that through this extraordinary circuit they could transmit as many as four signals per second. They inferred that an Atlantic cable would offer but little more resistance, and would therefore be electrically workable and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... Agricultural Economics, and, for the lack of such impartial information, the fundamental conflict between tillage and grazing goes on in the dark. We know where coal is to be found in Ireland; we do not know with any assurance where it is and where it is not profitably workable. The same is true of granite, marble, and ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... ever anywhere else bronze should come to be used, the bronze-weaponed people must ultimately cross over and subjugate the stone-weaponed aborigines of the island. Moreover, bronze was certain to be first hit upon in those countries where tin and copper were most easily workable—that is to say, in Asia. From Asia, the secret of its manufacture spread to the outlying peninsula of Europe, where it was quickly adopted by the Aryan Celts, who had already invaded the outlying continent, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... Wyllard, "with a little encouragement they'll do it themselves—that is, the English, Danes, and Germans. One can trust them to evolve a workable system. It's in their nature. You can trace most things that tend to wholesome efficiency back to the old Teutonic leaven. By and bye, they'll proceed to put some pressure on the Latins, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... may take it, then, that an experiment in the depicting of professional life would, even from the financial standpoint, be workable; and I would even go so far as to suggest that a play could be written in which there did not appear one single lord, general, Member of Parliament, baronet, professional beauty, usurer (upon a large scale ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... seems to me that the first step toward providing this is to supply ourselves with a systematic method of handling our estimates and expenditures and bringing them to the point where they will not be an unnecessary strain upon our income or necessitate unreasonable taxation; in other words, a workable budget system. And I respectfully suggest that two elements are essential to such a system-namely, not only that the proposal of appropriations should be in the hands of a single body, such as a single appropriations committee in each house of the Congress, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... that the stones should be thrown at her rather than at her sister. She at once went practically to work with Donkey Street. She did not wish to keep it—it was too remote from Ansdore to be easily workable, and she was content with her own thriving estate. She sold Donkey Street with all its stock, and decided to lay out the money in improvements of her land. She would drain the waterlogged innings by the Kent Ditch, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... to work on that water-supply," he said. "The ground's workable still, and may stay so for a long time yet. ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... cut the branches into smaller and more workable proportions. Pixie unravelled string and wire, and the three elders worked steadily at their separate wreaths. At the end of an hour they had progressed so well that it was suggested that the three fragments should be tied together, and the wreath ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... step, the required action is developed to place it upon a practical, workable basis as a detailed plan to be executed. The "act or series of acts" represented by the selected "course of action" has now become a detailed "act or series of acts". As such, it is now susceptible of being assigned, in whole or in part, to subordinate commanders as "tasks". ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... camels on the embankment of the canal, and trains of donkeys laden with marketing for the city by the sea, seemed stationary as we rushed by. The land appeared to be thoroughly cultivated. There were no fences or waste corners in sight. Every foot of workable ground ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... attack by the evil one. It is not surprising, though it is deeply grievous, that the common idea about this book among Christian people is that it is a sort of a puzzle, that it is impossible to get a simple, clear, workable understanding of its message. Parts of it are conned over tenderly and loved, a paragraph here, a verse there, and so on, but a grasp of the one simple message of the book seems not common, to put it mildly. No book of the sixty-six ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... turns on this,—letting God have the full use of us; living as though God were the realest thing in this matter-of-fact, every-day world; going on the supposition that the Bible is indeed His Word, and is a workable book for daily problems and needs, the one workable book; making everything bend toward getting His will done. When we get up into His presence, this will be found to have been the one thing worth while. When the race story has been all told, the biography of earth brought to its ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... cutting up, and it has been valued at L100. As there is a good market here for pearls, no doubt many others have been found that "have not come to light." A few years back, "pearl fisheries" of rather an extraordinary kind were here and there to be found in the outskirts, the prices of good workable shell having risen to to such an extent that it paid to hunt for and dig up the scrap flung away in former years, as much as 15s. to 20s. per bag being obtained for some of these finds. One smart little master who recollected where his scrap was deposited some years before, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... hours' drill every day except Sunday; no light task for a mere armed mob groping its ignorant way, however zealously, towards the organized efficiency of a real army. The companies had to be formed into workable battalions, the battalions into brigades. There was a deplorable lack of cavalry, artillery, engineers, commissariat, transport, medical services, and, above all, staff. Armament was bad; other munitions were worse. There would have been no chance whatever of ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... you, that the chief use of Logic, in real life, is to deduce Conclusions from workable Premisses, and to satisfy yourself that the Conclusions, deduced by other people, are correct? I only wish it were! Society would be much less liable to panics and other delusions, and POLITICAL life, especially, would be a totally ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll

... years of the nineteenth century failed, the result was due in large measure to the fact that the business was committed to wrong hands. The organs for working the change were for the most part autocratic monarchs and old-world diplomatists—the last people in the world likely to bring about a workable millennium. A great crisis demands very careful manipulation. Cynicism must not be allowed to play any part in it. Traditional watchwords are not of much use. Theoretical idealism itself may turn out to be a most formidable stumbling-block. Yet no one can doubt that a solution ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... charter of incorporation to the Chamber, on the grounds that it would be creating an imperium in imperio, and the comments of Volksraad members on the petition, have made it clear that the Government view the Chamber with no friendly eye. The facts that in order to get a workable pass law at all the Chamber had to prepare it in every detail, together with plans for the creation and working of a Government department; and that in order to diminish the litigation under the gold law, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... aristocracy, but rather the presence in it of the thought of Montesquieu and his school, of the necessity of studying political phenomena in relation, not merely to forms of government and law, but in relation to whole groups of social facts which give to law and government the spirit that makes them workable. Connected with this, is a particularly wide interpretation and a particularly impressive application of the maxims of expediency, because a wide conception of the various interacting elements of ...
— Burke • John Morley

... farming class. It has had a steady growth during the past ten years, and is a quiet but powerful factor in rural progress. The Grange is perhaps too conservative in its administrative policy. It has not at least succeeded in converting to its fold the farmers of the great Mississippi Valley. But it has workable machinery, it disavows partisan politics and selfish class interests, and it subordinates financial benefits, while emphasizing educational and broadly political advantages. It seems fair to interpret the principles of the ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield

... too indefinitely framed to be workable. No officer is named to whom the petitions should go; no officer is obligated to submit the question; no method of authenticating the petitions is prescribed and no time for voting is fixed. The United ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... wood fire for guide to where the big miner was thawing the shaft in his claim, to make the frozen gravel workable, and in addition there were faint signs coming of the short-lived day. ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... growing band of those who have risen in rebellion against the Charles-Darwinian system on the one hand, and Messrs. Darwin and Wallace with the greater number of our more prominent biologists on the other, involves the very existence of evolution as a workable theory. For it is plain that what Nature can be supposed able to do by way of choice must depend on the supply of the variations from which she is supposed to choose. She cannot take what is not offered to her; and so again she cannot be supposed ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... not adopting it, the early Christian concentrated his thoughts on the problem of his own fitness and unfitness to adopt it: to the modern Socialist it is a theory, to the early Christian it was a call; modern Socialism says, "Elaborate a broad, noble and workable system and submit it to the progressive intellect of society." Early Christianity said, "Sell all thou hast and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... established in 1934 "to bring together leaders from agriculture, business, labor, and the professions to pool their experience and foresight in developing workable ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... interested in this experiment of yours, so I was sent over to get all the first-hand information I can. Frankly, I volunteered for the job; I was eager to come. There are plenty of skeptics at the Yard, I'll admit, but I'm not one of them. If the thing's workable, I want to see ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... he agrees that an idea is 'really' true, also agrees to whatever it says about its object; and since most anti- pragmatists have already come round to agreeing that, if the object exists, the idea that it does so is workable; there would seem so little left to fight about that I might well be asked why instead of reprinting my share in so much verbal wrangling, I do not show my sense of 'values' by burning ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... he is supposed to have been thoroughly instructed in its proper use, and, though on one or two occasions, owing to disregard of some trifling precaution, he has found it "jam," still, in the leisure of the practice-field, he has been generally able to get it right again, and put it in workable order. He is now hurrying along in all the excitement of battle, and in face of the enemy, of whom a batch appear on the horizon in front of him, when the word is given ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various

... Cooper lost the ability to become a civilian of the first rank. He was industrious but improvident; he made money and he lost it. He had a habit of abandoning good inventions for worse ones. The ability to eliminate is good, but in sifting ideas let us cleave to those that are workable, until Fate proves there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... a treatise on Domestic Science. The vacuum cleaner and the fireless cooker are not even mentioned. The efficient kitchen devised in such an interesting and clever way has no place in it. Its exclusive object is to suggest a satisfactory and workable solution along modern lines of how to get one's housework efficiently performed without doing it ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker

... unmoved by her tirade. "When you returned from Whitney you told me there remained only details to be worked out. About how long do you think it will be before you have a workable compound?" ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... of tons every year into London. The supply, however, in this district is rapidly decreasing. Careful calculations have been made as to the probable duration of this coal, of which the following is a summary. The workable quantity of coal remaining in the ten principal seams of this coal-field is estimated at 1,876,848,756 Newcastle chaldrons (each 35 cwt.). Deducting losses and underground and surface waste, the total merchantable round or good-sized coal will be 1,251,232,507 Newcastle chaldrons. Proceeding on ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... connection with the business of the night, I began closely to study the mysterious Zagazig messages, determined not to be beaten, and remembering the words of Edgar Allan Poe—the strange genius to whom we are indebted for the first workable system of deciphering cryptograms: "It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... treat his art seriously. A step farther: one cannot accept as a work of dramatic art a piece that does not seek to cause an illusion, or any play which formally admits the existence of the audience. A workable distinction may be found in using the terms "drama" and "entertainment," ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... the only kind she esteemed. Far oftener than himself she had sat in judgement on young women for whom hair and eyebrows and a disposition for the statuesque would have worked the miracle of sanctifying their stupidity if the miracle were workable. But that particular miracle never was. The qualities she rated highest were not the gifts but the conquests, the effects the actor had worked hard for, had dug out of the mine by unwearied study. Sherringham remembered to have had in the early part of their acquaintance a friendly dispute with ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... Western Europe. To less informed or less critical ages than our own, the absolute contribution of Cicero to ethics and metaphysics seemed comparable to that of the great Greek thinkers; the De Natura Deorum was taken as a workable argument against atheism, and the thin and wire-drawn discussions of the Academics were studied with an attention hardly given to the founder of the Academy. When a sounder historical method brought these writings into their real proportion, it ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... A workable stretcher can be made from coats by turning the sleeves inside out, passing the poles through the sleeves and buttoning the coat over the poles. This brings the turned sleeves on the inside. A five-bar gate or a door, if it ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... of the Oise ends. Above it is a weakly, purling stream, the greater part of the traffic going by the Canal Lateral, while below it broadens out into a workable, industrial sort of a waterway which is doing its best to contribute its share to the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... will understand that, and the little oases on the windy tops of hills will harbor for healing its ailing, house-weary broods. There is promise there of great wealth in ores and earths, which is no wealth by reason of being so far removed from water and workable conditions, but men are bewitched by it and tempted to try ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... but each year found us supplied with increasingly able help from our Chinese co-workers. We found ourselves driven to the practical testing of the principle: "When the pressure of the work is too heavy, then extend the work," and we found it to be sound and workable. Each term some extra responsibility was thrown off on to the shoulders of willing helpers, that we ourselves might be free to ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... live suffrage news and there were suffrage editions of several papers. Miss Hannah J. Patterson of Pittsburgh had charge of organizing the Woman Suffrage Party along political lines out of the State association, and to Mrs. Roessing and her belongs especial credit for the strong, workable organization which was built up so carefully in preparation for the campaign year. The State convention was held in Scranton, November 19-24. There was every indication that the next Legislature would submit a constitutional ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... if labor of like kind unemployed can not be found in this country, and the question of the necessity of importing such skilled labor in any particular instance may be determined by the Secretary of Labor...." A really workable test for immigration, superior by far to the literacy test or any other so far suggested, might easily be developed by simply enlarging the scope of this clause, making it include unskilled as well as skilled labor. No ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... effective voice in expressing the interests and needs of their people. I believe the effect of the reforms has been, is being, and will be, to draw the second class, who hope for colonial autonomy, into the ranks of the third class, who will be content with admission to a fair and workable co-operation. A correspondent wrote to me the ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... commission man almost a necessity in the general market. Neither the grower nor the local dealer can ship directly to the consumer or even to the retailer, except in a very limited way. It may be impracticable to devise any other workable system, but it must be remembered that every man who touches a barrel of apples on its journey from producer to consumer must be paid for doing so, and this pay must come either out of the seller's price or be added to the buyer's price. But so long as present ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... the sad plight that has overtaken all the small churches that have gone out from her, she must not only desire unity, as, no doubt, all the sects desire it, but she must have been provided by her all-wise Founder with what none of them even profess to possess, viz., some simple, workable, and effective means of securing it. This means, as practical as it is simple, is no other than one supreme central and living authority, enjoying full jurisdiction over all—that is to say, the authority of Peter, ever living in his See, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... possible basis of an award is the average rate of wages prevailing; but it has no claim as a standard of exact justice and is very far from being workable. Wages vary from a very high rate to a very low one; and the highest rate is that which prevails where a trade union which is strong enough to keep men out of its field of employment deals with a trust which is strong enough to keep rival producers out of its field of business. Under such conditions ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... is not mere theory, not something I read about or saw others do. These techniques are tested and workable. The next-to-last chapter of this book contains a complete plan of my 1992 garden with explanations and discussion of the ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... his in great degree in the years before the war. But now men who listen to him know that his perceptions are not merely logical—they are workable. His performances prove the ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... rise would occur at about such a date, and then forced the market up till they themselves had a good surplus. All this I know for a fact, because I was on the inside. Just at this time the syndicate intrusted to me three hundred thousand as a workable margin for certain future investments. My orders were to invest in this prepared stock only after October fifteenth. Meanwhile the manipulation of this amount was in my ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... follow the Virginia propositions, for the committee embodied some valuable suggestions which had occurred to them in their deliberations. Nevertheless, it substantially put the Virginia plan into a workable plan which proved to be the Constitution of the United ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... which they visited the proposed mill site, the McNabb holdings, and a great part of the available pulp-wood territory adjoining. With Murchison's help, Wentworth sketched a map of the district that showed with workable accuracy the location of lakes and streams, together with the location of Government and Hudson's Bay Company lands. This done, he secured an Indian guide and proceeded to lay out and blaze the route of the wagon road ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx



Words linked to "Workable" :   executable, work, possible, practicable, feasible



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