Enjoyable

How to spell enjoyable

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce enjoyable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does enjoyable mean?

1. adjectiveGiving pleasure or satisfaction; pleasant to experience.

Enjoyable in a sentence

• The weekend away turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable.

• She found the training course surprisingly enjoyable.

Where does enjoyable come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is built on 'joy', which English took from the Old French 'joie', itself descending from the Latin 'gaudia', the plural of 'gaudium' meaning 'delight' or 'rejoicing'. The verb 'enjoy' was formed in the 1300s by combining the prefix 'en-', meaning roughly 'to make' or 'to put into', with that joy element, so the literal sense was something close to 'to give joy to' or 'to receive joy from'. The adjective 'enjoyable', meaning 'capable of giving pleasure', appeared later by attaching the productive suffix '-able', which marks something fit or worthy to be done. The same Latin root for delight survives in the slightly old-fashioned words 'gaudy' and 'gaudeamus'. The spelling trap is the soft 'j' sound and the '-able' ending: the word keeps the full 'joy' inside it, then simply adds '-able' without dropping the 'y'.

How the word is built

• en- (to make, put into)
• joy (delight, from Latin gaudia)
• -able (capable of, worthy of)