understandable
adjEtymology From Middle English understondable, equivalent to understand + -able.
1
Capable of being understood; comprehensible.
2
Capable of being accepted or excused under the circumstances; permissible.
- The original branch was 5¾ miles long, from Llantrisant to Cowbridge only, but in 1889, the T.V.R. [Taff Vale Railway] obtained powers […] to continue the line for 6½ miles south to the coast at Aberthaw, ostensibly for the purpose of serving the important limestone works there, but one suspects other motives, including an understandable desire on the part of the T.V.R. to put a spoke in the wheel of the oncoming Barry Railway !1951 December, T. B. Sands, “Some Railway Byways in the Vale of Glamorgan”, in Railway Magazine, page 838:
- Derived terms
- nonunderstandable, understandableness, understandably, ununderstandable
- Related terms
- understandability