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readable

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Etymology

From read +‎ -able.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈɹiː.də.bəl/, [ˈɹiː.də.bl̩]
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Hyphenation: read‧a‧ble

Adjective

readable (comparative more readable or (rare) readabler, superlative most readable or (rare) readablest)

  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!
  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!
  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!
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.

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