Playable

How to spell playable

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce playable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does playable mean?

1. adjectiveAble to be played, whether as a game, a piece of music, or on a surface fit for sport.

Playable in a sentence

• Heavy rain left the pitch barely playable before kickoff.

• The developers patched the game until it was finally playable on older laptops.

Where does playable come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word play comes from the Old English plegian, meaning to exercise, to busy oneself, or to frolic, and its noun plega, which covered brisk movement, sport, and merriment. The suffix -able arrived in English through Old French from the Latin -abilis, which marked something as capable of undergoing the action of a verb, so the literal sense is 'able to be played'. Combining a thoroughly native English root with a borrowed Latin ending was a common pattern from the later medieval period onward, and it produced thousands of useful adjectives like readable and washable. Playable itself is recorded from around the seventeenth century and later widened with new technologies, describing pieces of music a musician can manage, sports surfaces fit for use, and video games that work well. The spelling trap is purely the ending: because the root play already finishes in a vowel sound, writers must remember it is -able, not -ible, and that the y is kept rather than altered.

How the word is built

• play (verb, from Old English plegian: to exercise, move briskly)
• -able (capable of being, from Latin -abilis)