Word of the Day

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

tractable

\TRAK-tuh-buhl\ , adjective;

Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed; docile.

Easily handled, managed, or worked; malleable.

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Quotes:

I have always found horses, an animal I am attached to, very tractable when treated with humanity and steadiness.

-- Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

He thought that our temperaments are at least partly innate: "Some men by unalterable frame of their constitution are stout, others timorous, some confident, others modest and tractable."

-- Jonathan Weiner, Time, Love, Memory

Alice gets out her calculator and begins solving what, for her, is a far more tractable kind of problem.

-- Stephen S. Hall, "The Smart Set", New York Times Magazine, June 4, 2000

Origin:

Tractable derives from Latin tractabilis, from tractare, to handle, to manage, frequentative of traho, to draw, to drag.