Etymology

From read +‎ -ableCategory:English terms suffixed with -able#READABLE.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹiː.də.bəl/, [ˈɹiː.də.bl̩]Category:English 3-syllable words#READABLECategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#READABLE

• Audio (US):

  (file)

  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#READABLE

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#READABLE
• Hyphenation: read‧a‧ble

Adjective

readable (comparative more readable or (rare, nonstandard) readabler, superlative most readable or (rare, nonstandard) readablest)Category:English lemmas#READABLECategory:English adjectives#READABLECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#READABLECategory:Pages with entries#READABLECategory:Pages with 1 entry#READABLE

1. (of handwriting, print, etc) Legible, possible to read or at least decipher.

   If that sign were still readable we'd know where we are!Category:English terms with usage examples#READABLE

2. Which can be read—i.e. accessed or played—by a certain technical type of device.

   No sale, those aren't readable with my DVD-player!Category:English terms with usage examples#READABLE

3. (of a book) Enjoyable to read, of an acceptable stylistic quality or at least functionally composed.

   These assembly instructions aren't readable, I still don't have a clue how to start!Category:English terms with usage examples#READABLE

   • 1852 March 3, Thomas Carlyle, “TC to John A[itken] Carlyle”, in Clyde de L[oache] Ryals, Kenneth J[oshua] Fielding, et al., editors, The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Duke-Edinburgh edition, volume 27 (1852), Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, published 1999, →ISBN, page 59:

     I have been twice at the Museum looking out for Friedrich Books,—that I might examine them a little, and see whether they were worth buying. […] I have got a rather curious new German Book upon Naples and Masaniello (chiefly) whh often made me remember you. To one who knows the streets edifices &c the thing may be readabler: I mean to send it you to Scotsbg the day after tomorrow, along with my Mother’s Magazine.

     Category:English terms with quotations#READABLE

   • 1875, John Brougham, John Elderkin, “Preface”, in John Brougham, John Elderkin, editors, Lotos Leaves. Original Stories, Essays, and Poems, Boston, Mass.: William F[earing] Gill and Company, […], →OCLC, page ix:

     Your August Potentiality will not fail to observe that those spiritual adumbrations are not evanescent or fugaceous, a latrocinous cheat, repugnant to common-sense and an insult to the most parvanimous of human intelligences, but tangible entities, altogether stationary, and as visible to every eye as the readablest of printed work.

     Category:English terms with quotations#READABLE

   • 1915 January 23, G[eorge] Bernard Shaw, “Chestertonism and the War: A Review”, in The New Statesman: A Weekly Review of Politics and Literature, volume IV, number 94, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 386, column 2:

     With this brief preamble I can, without being more than usually misunderstood, proceed to my duty of reviewing the readablest and quite the maddest book produced by the war: namely, The Prussian Hath Said in His Heart, by Cecil Chesterton, who says very truly that it is what a man says in his heart that matters, and not what he says in Hyde Park.

     Category:English terms with quotations#READABLE

   • 1949, George Bernard Shaw, “My Apology for This Book”, in Sixteen Self Sketches, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, →OCLC, page 19:

     After his childhood, which is the readablest part of even the worst autobiography, his attempts to escape from his subject are pitiable.

     Category:English terms with quotations#READABLE

   • 1953 February, American Water Works Association, “Percolation and Runoff”, in Journal, volume 45, number 2, Denver, Colo., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 40, columns 1–2:

     So far as cartoons are concerned these days, nothing—not even sewage works—is sacred, and everything is thereby readabler and believabler.

     Category:English terms with quotations#READABLE

   • 1962 October, “New Reading on Railways: Great Western. By Cecil J. Allen, Ian Allan. 2s 6d.”, in Modern Railways, unnumbered page:

     This is a masterly work of condensation, omitting nothing of importance and providing a most readable book that for a modest half-crown is incredibly good value.

     Category:English terms with quotations#READABLE

   • 2012 October 3, Richard Kenney, The One-Strand River: Poems, 1994-2007‎, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 155:

     A god's blue fire gone, the man is left like a page in the grate, apparently unchanged. Ash-gray, granted, and somewhat curled at the edge, but readable. Readable, he thinks. Until the passage—cat's paw?—backwash?—up the chimney?—whump-whump, rotorblades of a distant hummingbird, let's say: then all at once, old cobweb upwhipped, the words vanish.

     Category:English terms with quotations#READABLE

References

• readable on Wikipedia.Wikipedia