Readable Meaning
/ˈɹiː.də.bəl/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjLegible, possible to read or at least decipher.
adjWhich can be read—i.e. accessed or played—by a certain technical type of device.
Sentence Examples
Markdown is a markup language, but a very readable one.
Seriously, many of them are not readable.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The document must be in a clear font to ensure it is ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The author's clear and engaging style made even complex topics highly ____ for a general audience.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree English read Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlis Proto-Italic *-ðlis Latin -bilis Latin -ābilis Old French -ablebor. Middle English -able English -able English readable From read + -able.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"I have been twice at the Museum looking out for Friedrich Books,—that I might examine them a little, and see whether they were worth buying. […] I have got a rather curious new German Book upon Naples and Masaniello (chiefly) whh often made me remember you. To one who knows the streets edifices &c the thing may be readabler: I mean to send it you to Scotsbg the day after tomorrow, along with my Mother’s Magazine."
— 1852 March 3, Thomas Carlyle, “TC to John A[itken] Carlyle”, in Clyde de L[oache] Ryals, Kenneth J[oshua] Fielding, et al., editors, The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Duke-Edinburgh edition, volume 27 (1852), Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, published 1999, →ISBN, page 59:
"Your August Potentiality will not fail to observe that those spiritual adumbrations are not evanescent or fugaceous, a latrocinous cheat, repugnant to common-sense and an insult to the most parvanimous of human intelligences, but tangible entities, altogether stationary, and as visible to every eye as the readablest of printed work."
— 1875, John Brougham, John Elderkin, “Preface”, in John Brougham, John Elderkin, editors, Lotos Leaves. Original Stories, Essays, and Poems, Boston, Mass.: William F[earing] Gill and Company, […], →OCLC, page ix:
"With this brief preamble I can, without being more than usually misunderstood, proceed to my duty of reviewing the readablest and quite the maddest book produced by the war: namely, The Prussian Hath Said in His Heart, by Cecil Chesterton, who says very truly that it is what a man says in his heart that matters, and not what he says in Hyde Park."
— 1915 January 23, G[eorge] Bernard Shaw, “Chestertonism and the War: A Review”, in The New Statesman: A Weekly Review of Politics and Literature, volume IV, number 94, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 386, column 2:
"After his childhood, which is the readablest part of even the worst autobiography, his attempts to escape from his subject are pitiable."
— 1949, George Bernard Shaw, “My Apology for This Book”, in Sixteen Self Sketches, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, →OCLC, page 19:
"So far as cartoons are concerned these days, nothing—not even sewage works—is sacred, and everything is thereby readabler and believabler."
— 1953 February, American Water Works Association, “Percolation and Runoff”, in Journal, volume 45, number 2, Denver, Colo., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 40, columns 1–2:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The document must be in a clear font to ensure it is ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The author's clear and engaging style made even complex topics highly ____ for a general audience.