Manageable

How to spell manageable

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce manageable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does manageable mean?

1. adjectiveAble to be handled, controlled, or dealt with without too much difficulty.

Manageable in a sentence

• Breaking the project into smaller tasks made the workload feel manageable.

• After the new medication, her pain became far more manageable.

Where does manageable come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word builds on the verb 'manage', which English picked up in the 1500s from the Italian maneggiare, meaning 'to handle or train a horse'. That Italian verb traces back to the Latin noun manus, simply meaning 'hand', so the original idea was very literally something you could control by hand. Over time 'manage' broadened from handling horses to handling affairs, money, and people, and the adjective 'manageable' followed to describe anything that could be kept under control. The spelling trap lives in the join: because the suffix '-able' begins with a vowel that would normally let the silent 'e' drop (as in 'movable'), writers expect 'managable', yet the 'e' is deliberately retained here to keep the soft 'g' sound. That same soft-g rule is why 'noticeable' and 'changeable' also hang on to their middle 'e'.

How the word is built

• manage (handle/direct, from Latin manus: hand)
• -able (capable of being)