tractable
adjAU, CA, US, UK /ˈtɹæk.tə.bəl/
Etymology From Middle English tractable, tractabel, from Latin tractābilis (“that may be touched, handled, or managed”), from tractō (“take in hand, handle, manage”), frequentative of trahō (“draw”).
Of people Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed.
- "Tess is queer." "But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 45:
- But once in London Jane Porter was no more tractable than she had been in Baltimore. She found one excuse after another, […]1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Ships That Pass”, in The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, […], published March 1915, →OCLC, page 159:
Of a problem Easy to deal with or manage.
- I have always found horses, an animal I am attached to, very tractable when treated with humanity and steadiness.1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “Some Instances of the Folly which the Ignorance of Women Generates; with Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement that a Revolution in Female Manners may Naturally be Expected to Produce”, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC, page 440:
- Of all the tractable, equal-tempered, attached, and faithful beings that ever lived, I believe he was the most so.1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 61, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC:
2 more examples
- [T]his matter of the vanishing bridge must have been arranged in order to put him in a properly subdued and tractable frame of mind.1909, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter 18, in The Bronze Bell:
- Some masters can be quite kind if you're meek and tractable.2008, Lynn Flewelling, Shadows Return, →ISBN, page 96:
Capable of being shaped; malleable.
- I need not point out the advantages of modelling in a material as durable as stone. . . . Mixed up with just enough water to form a stiff paste, it accommodates itself to the touch of the modelling tool. . . . There are two inherent difficulties in using it—one, it is not so tractable as clay. . . .1866, P. Le Neve Foster, "Report on the Art-Workmanship Prizes", reprinted in Journal of the Society of Arts, March 2, 1966
Obsolete Capable of being handled or touched.
- At leaſt five Hundred of theſe reforming Vultures are daily plundering our Pockets, and ranſacking our Houſes, leaving me ſometimes not one pair of Tractable Buttocks in my Vaulting-School to provide for my Family, or earn me ſo much as a Pudding for my next Sundays Dinner : [...]1707, Thomas Brown, “Moll Quarles's Answer to Mother Creswell of Famous Memory”, in The Second Volume of the Works of Mr. Tho. Brown, containing Letters from the Dead to the Living both Serious and Comical, part three, page 184:
Mathematics, Sciences Sufficiently operationalizable or useful to allow a mathematical calculation to proceed toward a solution.
- This assumption is in the Raiffa and Schlaifer (1961, p. 72) spirit of using ‘a little ingenuity. . . to find a tractable function’ to quantify risk-preferences and probability judgments so as to make the analysis feasible.1987, Ira Horowitz, “Market Structure Implications of Export-Price Uncertainty”, in Managerial and Decision Economics, volume 8, number 2, page 134:
Computer, Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Science, Sciences Of a decision problem Algorithmically solvable fast enough to be practically relevant, typically in polynomial time.
- Antonyms
- intractable
- Related terms
- tractability, tractableness, tractably