Viability

How to spell viability

9 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce viability

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does viability mean?

1. nounThe state of being capable of working successfully or surviving.

Viability in a sentence

• The board questioned the financial viability of the new factory.

• Engineers tested the viability of building a tunnel through the hill.

Where does viability come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin vita, meaning 'life', the same root that gives us 'vital' and 'vitamin'. French built the adjective viable in the early nineteenth century to describe a newborn capable of surviving, literally 'able to live', and from it formed the noun viabilite for that capacity for life. English borrowed both words in the 1820s, at first in the strict medical sense of an infant or organism able to stay alive on its own. From there the meaning broadened into the general modern sense of being workable or capable of succeeding, so that we now speak of the viability of a business plan or a project. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers must remember the 'i' of vi-a-bil-ity and the soft 'a' before the ending, since the rapid run of weak vowels is easy to slur and misspell.

How the word is built

• vi- (from Latin vita: life)
• -abil- (capable of)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)