Portable
adjectiveAble to be easily carried or moved from one place to another.
How to spell portable
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce portable
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does portable mean?
- adjectiveAble to be easily carried or moved from one place to another.
Portable in a sentence
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The engineer packed a portable generator for the remote site.
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She bought a small portable heater to take between rooms.
Where does portable come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word comes from the Latin portabilis, meaning 'able to be carried', which was built on the verb portare, 'to carry' or 'to bear'. That same root sits inside a surprisingly large family of English words, including 'transport' (to carry across), 'export' (to carry out), 'import' (to carry in), and even 'porter', the person who carries luggage. English adopted portable through Old French in the late 1300s, originally describing anything light enough to be moved by hand. The spelling stays close to its Latin parent, keeping the clean 'port' root before the familiar '-able' ending. Because the word ends in the very common '-able' suffix rather than '-ible', it is a useful anchor for remembering that fully meaningful root words usually take '-able'.
How the word is built
- port (from portare: to carry)
- -able (capable of)
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