Doable

How to spell doable

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce doable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does doable mean?

1. adjectiveCapable of being done or achieved within the available time, effort, or resources.

Doable in a sentence

• The project is tight but doable if we start this week.

• She broke the renovation into smaller, doable tasks.

Where does doable come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly English coinage built from the plain native verb 'do' and the productive suffix '-able', which means 'capable of being' or 'fit to be'. The verb 'do' descends from Old English 'don', a core Germanic word that has meant 'to perform' or 'to accomplish' for well over a thousand years. The suffix '-able' arrived in English through Old French from the Latin '-abilis', meaning 'able to be', and English speakers soon began attaching it freely to native verbs, not just to borrowed Latin ones. The result, 'doable', simply means 'able to be done', and it has been recorded in writing since at least the 1400s. The spelling trap lies in keeping both the silent 'e' from no one (you write do plus able and the words fuse cleanly) and in resisting the urge to drop a letter; the form is do-able with the 'e' retained, giving 'doable'.

How the word is built

• do (verb: perform, accomplish)
• -able (capable of being)