Readable

How to spell readable

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce readable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does readable mean?

1. adjectiveAble to be read, either because the writing is clear enough to decipher or because the text is pleasant and easy to follow.

Readable in a sentence

• The contract was printed in a small but perfectly readable font.

• She rewrote the report to make the dense statistics more readable for the board.

Where does readable come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word pairs the native English verb 'read' with the borrowed suffix '-able'. The verb 'read' descends from Old English 'raedan', which originally meant 'to advise, to counsel, or to interpret', and only later narrowed to the act of making sense of written symbols; that older sense of giving counsel still survives in the German cousin 'raten', meaning 'to advise'. The suffix '-able' arrived through Old French from the Latin '-abilis', meaning 'capable of' or 'fit for', and it has been freely attached to English verbs for centuries to form adjectives. 'Readable' itself is recorded from the early 1800s, blending a thoroughly Germanic root with a Latin-derived ending. The spelling keeps the silent 'a' of 'read' intact and simply tacks on '-able', so the trap for writers is choosing '-able' rather than the rival '-ible' ending seen in words like 'legible'.

How the word is built

• read (from Old English raedan: to advise, interpret, read)
• -able (capable of being)