Originally appeared only on French and Latin words, likeseparable. Over time-able was added to stems of English verbs ending in-ate, such aseducable. Finally, due to probable confusion with the wordable, it was used to form adjectives from all sorts of verbs, nouns, and even verb phrases, such askickable,get-at-able, andhittable.
A terminal silent-e is often dropped when adding-able, but for roots ending with a soft-ce or-ge, such asreplaceable andchangeable, the-e is kept so that these are not misinterpreted as hard ‘c’ or ‘g’ sounds. Similar spelling patterns apply to some other suffixes beginning with a vowel, such as-ous infamous vs.courageous.
The final consonant of a root is doubled in the same contexts as when adding the suffix-ed. In general, this means doubling occurs when the preceding vowel is short and stressed (as inwinnable) but not when it is long (as inobtainable) or unstressed (as inopenable). In British English, a final L is typically doubled after a short vowel regardless of whether the vowel is stressed or unstressed (as incompellable,modellable). In American English, final L typically follows the same rules as other consonants (as incompellable,modelable). These are the general trends, but there is some variation within British and American English between these two methods of doubling final L.
The form-ible usually has the same senses and pronunciation, though sometimes equivalent terms have diverged in meaning: comparesuggestable(“capable of being suggested”) withsuggestible(“susceptible to influence by suggestion”). The choice between the two is somewhat idiosyncratic, but in general,-ible is used in forms derived from Latin verbs of the second, third, and fourth conjugations, and in a few words whose roots end in a softc org, while-able is used in all other words, particularly those formed from Latin verbs of the first conjugation and those that come from French or from Anglo-Saxon (Old English). Fowler'sEnglish Usage recommends using-ible for simplicity's sake inany word whose root ends in a softc org to avoid-eable (e.g.,*changible rather thanchangeable), but this recommendation has generally not been followed.
A number of adjectives in-able come from verbs that do not have direct objects, but that rather are construed with prepositions. In these cases, the preposition does not appear with the adjective in-able; hence,reliable(“fit to beingrelied on”),laughable(“suited forlaughing at”),remarkable(“fit to beremarked upon”), and so on.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
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