| 释义 |
usable, a.|ˈjuːzəb(ə)l|
Also useable.
[a. OF. usable (1311), f. user: see use v. and -able. Cf. It. usabile, Pr. uzable.]
That may or can be used; capable of use.
Somewhat rare a 1800 (not in Johnson). Freq. from c 1840.
1382Wyclif Exod. xxxix. 36 Thei offerden vp..the candel⁓stik, lanterns, and the vsable thingis of it. ― Ps. cxlviii. 10 Bestis, and alle vsable bestis. c1449Pecock Repr. ii. xviii. 259 Forwhi no vntrewe speche..is alloweable and vsable. c1454― Folewer 26 Þe werk and office..not resonable to be excercible and vseable bi eny of þe wittis bifore seid. 1619Time's Storehouse 756/1 If it be neither vse-able, nor beneficiall. 1666J. Smith Old Age 82 How much service they [sc. the grinders] do to man while usable. 1768–74Tucker Lt. Nat. (1834) II. 636 Every wood is usable for some good purpose. 1801Monthly Mag. II. 289 There is a difference..between words used and words useable. 1832Coleridge Lett. (1895) 761 This tract is a very treasure, and never more usable as a medicine for our clergy. 1848Mill Pol. Econ. I. 53 The books, or other useable or saleable articles. 1893Cosmopolitan XIV. 462/2 The synonym is shorter, more usable.
Hence usaˈbility, ˈusableness.
1842Blackw. Mag. LII. 730 It is not the utility, but the useability of a thing which is in question. 1872H. W. Beecher Pop. Lect. Preaching iv. 110, I do not know anything that can compare in facility of usableness with phrenology. 1888Standard 26 Jan. 2/4 They had a right to half the ‘usability’, if he might use the term, of the line. |