portableadj.n.
/ˈpɔːtəbl/, U.S. /ˈpɔrdəb(ə)l/ A. adj.† 1. Bearable, endurable; that can be tolerated. portable charge (also burden) (Scottish): a payment or service that is to be, or must be, rendered by every person or corporation liable for it. Obsolete.† 3. Of a river, lake, etc.: capable of carrying ships or boats; navigable. Obsolete.† 5. Portly. Obsolete. rare.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > calmness > patience > [adjective] > forbearing or tolerant > endurable or tolerable
portablec1450
supportablec1450
tolerablea1500
durable1509
comportable1599
tractable1605
bearable1656
endurable1800
brookable1824
liveable1841
c1450 Contin. Lydgate's Secrees (Sloane 2464) 2384 (MED) Dere sone..the hous of thy mynde be thy sogettys..ffroom velonye..Them to diffende to the is portable.
c1460 J. Lydgate Fabula Duorum Mercatorum (Harl. 2255) 315 in Minor Poems (1934) ii. 497 (MED) Drye tisyk is withal partable [read portable].
1489 in J. Marwick Extracts Rec. Burgh Edinb. (1869) I. 57 The outlandis folkis..hafand nother stob nor stake within this towne..nor yit beris sic portable chargis with tham as extentis and vtheris quhen thai occur.
c1500 Melusine (1895) 209 To putte me to raisounable raunson & payement portable to me.
1589–90 in D. Masson Reg. Privy Council Scotl. (1881) 1st Ser. IV. 452 Fra all watcheing,..stent or contributioun, or beiring or sustening of ony uther portable chargeis.
1608 W. Shakespeare King Lear xiii. 101 How light and portable my paine seemes now. View more context for this quotation
a1653 H. Binning Serm. (1845) 585 The soul puts upon Him that unsupportable yoke of Transgressions, and takes from Him the portable yoke of His commandments.
1689 in R. Renwick Extracts Rec. Stirling (1889) II. 58 He is ane burges of the burgh and hes borne portable burding with the remanent burgesses.
1707 W. Black Privileges of Royal Burrows v. §1 47 None be chosen to be upon the Council but Magistrats [sic] and Craftsmen, actual and real Burgesses dwelling within the Town, and bearing all portable charges within the same.
2.
a. Capable of being carried by hand or on the person; capable of being moved from place to place; easily carried or conveyed. Also: (designating a device, apparatus, etc.) made smaller and lighter than normal, to enable it to be carried easily.
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the world > movement > transference > [adjective] > relating to conveying or transporting > carrying > able to be carried
portativec1400
portable1454
carryable1563
carriageable1594
tursablec1650
portatile1657
carry-along1939
society > occupation and work > equipment > machine > types of machine generally > [adjective] > other types
stout1702
multiplying1767
reciprocating1768
locomotive1800
centripetal1835
self-contained1839
uniplane1843
high-speed1844
powered1847
flexible1859
undergrounda1884
chip-proof1901
portable1913
batch1940
closed-loop1958
interactive1967
1454–5 Acct. in Berks, Bucks & Oxon Archæol. Jrnl. (1903) 9 118 (MED) Item, for mendyng the portabil crucyfix at Corpus Xri day, ij s. iiij d.
a1500 (?a1425) tr. Secreta Secret. (Lamb.) 91 Þat portable kynde..he þanne þat yn his name racys hit and berys it with hym clanly, he shal purchace reuerence and honour.
1598 A. M. tr. J. Guillemeau Frenche Chirurg. lf. xvi b/1 The Instrumentes of a little portable case.
1669 S. Sturmy Mariners Mag. v. xii. 49 Very portable and fit for his Pocket.
1730 A. Gordon tr. F. S. Maffei Compl. Hist. Anc. Amphitheatres 337 Portable Forms or Benches.
1787 T. Jefferson Let. 30 Jan. in Papers (1955) XI. 97 Having a great desire to have a portable copying machine, and being satisfied from some experiments that the principle of the large machine might be applied in a small one, I planned one when in England and had it made.
1821 J. Q. Adams in C. Davies Metric Syst. (1871) iii. 200 The pound weight should be a specific gravity easily portable about the person.
1872 J. Yeats Growth Commerce 50 Holding property not in lands but portable goods.
1913 Wireless World Apr. p. xxxiv./2 The hon. secretary showed some model Marconi apparatus and a portable set.
1951 Festival of Brit.: Catal. Exhibits: South Bank Exhib. (H.M.S.O.) 128/2 Portable radio..mains or battery.
1995 Sci. Amer. Sept. 53/2 Portable telephones and other wireless devices are essentially miniature computers with some extra electronics to transmit and receive radio signals.
b. Of a liquid substance: that may be carried or transported conveniently, having been reduced by evaporation to a dried or concentrated form able to be reconstituted later by the addition of water. Now historical.
ΚΠ
1594 H. Plat Jewell House 36 (heading) A portable ynke to be caried in the forme of a powder in any paper, leather purse or boxe.
1725 E. Strother Ess. Sickness & Health (ed. 2) ii. 49 Consider the fashionable and portable Soop, now in Use with the Quality.
1747 H. Glasse Art of Cookery vi. 65 To make Portable Soop..the Glew will be quite hard... When you use it, pour boiling Water on it.
1775 tr. Valuable Secrets Arts & Trades p. xxii A portable ink, without gall-nut or vitriol... Another portable powder, to make ink instantly.
1836 W. Irving Astoria II. 192 Five pounds of portable soup, and a sufficient quantity of dried meat to allow each man a pittance of five pounds and a quarter.
1849 Punch 17 91/2 We have all heard of ‘Portable Soup’... Now we have ‘Portable Milk’. A small jar of this solidified material, we are told, contains the equivalent of six gallons of fluid milk.
1892 Daily Citizen (Iowa City, Iowa) 19 Aug. One ounce of ‘salep’, boiled with an equal quantity of the animal jelly known as portable soup, in two quarts of water, will suffice for the daily nourishment of an able-bodied man.
1930 R. V. Billis & A. S. Kenyon Pastures New 94 Even ‘soup’ made from colonial meat, was exported to England. This was in the form of dried or powdered meat, packed in tins. The idea came from Sydney, where the product was called ‘portable soup’, and in England it was termed ‘concentrated gravy’.
1961 C. Lloyd Nation & Navy viii. 138 Salt provisions caused scurvy, hence the importance of new methods of preserving food, notably portable soup (used by Cook) and canned meat, first issued in 1813.
2003 Manch. Guardian Weekly (Nexis) 27 Aug. 18 It began with the Great Exhibition. Not all exhibits were aesthetic—they included preserved meat, ‘portable soup’, and ‘consolidated milk’.
c. Of a building, bridge, etc.: not of a permanent construction; capable of being dismantled and re-erected elsewhere.
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society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > a building > building of specific construction > [adjective]
wandedc1593
brick-built1596
rock-built1596
mud-walled1607
sedgy1624
sodden1639
nogged1688
frame1760
logged1784
stucco1786
weatherboarded1794
piled1795
thick-walled1820
clapboarded1835
board-built1837
pebble-dashed1839
puncheoned1843
timber-framed1843
betimbered1847
pile-built1851
massy1855
bamboo-walled1858
portable1860
half-timber1874
stone-faced1874
Red River frame1879
ashlared1881
granolithic1881
brick-end1883
converted1888
steel frame1898
board-and-bat1902
traviated1902
steel-framed1906
prefabricated1921
prefab1937
multiwall1940
pre-engineered1955
curtain-walled1959
pre-fabbed1959
timber-frame1967
system-built1968
flat-pack1982
1604 G. Downame Lect. XV Psalme 5 A Tabernacle is a militarie mansion, and as it were a portable house which hath no fixed seat or setled place.
1655 W. Gouge & T. Gouge Learned Comm. Hebrewes (ix. 1) ii. 300 [The tabernacle] was a kind of portable Temple.
1670 H. Oldenburg Let. Feb. in Corr. (1969) VI. 476 Antiquity attributes..the Holy Utensils, fittest for a Portable Tabernacle, to Moses.
1718 J. Ozell tr. J. Pitton de Tournefort Voy. Levant I. 384 Nothing surpriz'd me so much as these portable Houses; they are prodigiously magnificent.
1773 J. Bentham Let. 4 Dec. (1968) I. 174 Estimates of portable Houses for East Florida as they call them at Carolina.
1827 E. Grosvenor in G. Huxley Lady Elizabeth of Grosvenors (1965) vii. 140 The artillery..was very finely appointed, with cannon and portable bridges.
1860 Players 1 v. 39 (advt.) Portable Theatres with scenery, Gas Fittings, &c. fitted up in town or country.
1904 Collier's 7 May 20/1 (advt.) M & M Portable Houses... Better built and better looking than you can have constructed at home and at much less cost.
1955 Sci. News Let. 5 Mar. 160/1 Portable rink for outdoor ice skating makes this winter sport possible in some areas from April to November.
1992 Daily Tel. 24 July 4/4 A stolen car was used to ram-raid a shop and a portable building was set alight.
d. Computing. Of software: usable on different machines or on different systems; transferable from one machine or system to another.
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1971 J. F. Traub in J. R. Rice Math. Software v. 136 By portable software we mean that only small easily identifiable changes are necessary to transfer the software to a new environment.
1984 QL User Dec. 28 As it is written mostly in machine-independent code, the system is extraordinarily portable.
2001 Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey) (Nexis) 8 Jan. [He] has experience writing his own asset-management software. The difference this time is that he's making it fully portable, and useful across industry groups and even the military.
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society > travel > travel by water > [adjective] > navigable
shippable1483
sailable1555
portative1570
portable1580
navigerous1656
voyageable1819
1580 in Jrnl. Cork Hist. & Archaeol. Soc. (1893) 22/2 Which Ryver is portable for a boate of two tunnes.
1582 in R. Hakluyt Diuers Voy. sig. K3 If you finde great plenty of tymber on the shore side or vpon any portable riuer.
1602 R. Cecil Let. 9 Aug. in Lett. Cecil to Carew (1864) 124 Yf we find that it be neere any portable Ryver that may carry it to the sea.
1685 A. Wood Life 23 Mar. III. 136 A drie winter: no flood: waters very low, not portable.
1714 Bill for making River Neene Navigable 5 Keeping the said River open, portable and passable, for Boats, Barges, Lighters and other Vessels, as any Commissioners of Sewers..are enabled to do in any other Rivers or Places.
1761 Act for making River Weaver Navigable 4 To make the said River navigable, portable, and passable, for Boats, Barges, Lighters, and other Vessels, from..Frodsham-bridge to Winsford-bridge.
4. figurative.† a. Easy to carry in the memory; adapted for or easily employed in all circumstances. Obsolete.
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the mind > mental capacity > memory > retention in the mind > [adjective] > easy to remember
memorablea1616
portable1655
1655 T. Fuller Church-hist. Brit. vii. 406 These Psalms were therefore translated, to make them more portable in peoples memories.
1711 R. Steele Spectator No. 100. ⁋4 This portable Quality of Good-humour seasons all the Parts and Occurrences we meet with.
b. Of a right, financial arrangement, piece of work, etc.: capable of being transferred or adapted in changed circumstances.See also portable pension n. at Compounds.
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society > trade and finance > fees and taxes > grants and allowances > [adjective] > pension > types of
non-contributory1907
top hat1952
portable1965
1965 Economist 13 Feb. 671 Pension rights..should not be lost when an employee is sacked or moves to another firm; ideally they should be ‘portable’.
1970 A. Cameron et al. Computers & Old Eng. Concordances 22 The proposal never says..what care he's going to take to make sure that his work is portable, that his work really can be used by people at other institutions.
2002 Chicago Tribune 15 Sept. v. 3/1 Unspent funds in the spending accounts can be retained by the employee and rolled over from year to year. That could allow healthy workers to create a portable savings account for medical expenses.
ΘΚΠ
the world > life > the body > bodily shape or physique > broad shape or physique > [adjective] > fat or plump
fatc893
frimOE
fullOE
overfatOE
greatOE
bald1297
roundc1300
encorsivea1340
fattishc1369
fleshyc1369
fleshlyc1374
repletea1398
largec1405
corsious1430
corpulentc1440
corsyc1440
fulsome1447
portlyc1487
corporate1509
foggy fata1529
corsive1530
foggish?1537
plump1545
fatty1552
fleshful1552
pubble1566
plum1570
pursy1576
well-fleshed1576
gross?1577
fog1582
forfatted1586
gulchy1598
bouksome1600
fat-fed1607
meatified1607
chuff1609
plumpya1616
bloat1638
blowze-like1647
obese1651
jollya1661
bloated1664
chubbed1674
pluffya1689
puffya1689
pussy1688
sappy1694
crummy1718
chubby1722
fodgel1724
well-padded1737
beefy1743
plumpish1753
pudsy1754
rotund1762
portable1770
lusty1777
roundabout1787
well-cushioned1802
plenitudinous1803
stout1804
embonpointc1806
roly-poly1808
adipose1810
roll-about1815
foggy1817
poddy1823
porky1828
hide-blown1834
tubby1835
stoutish1836
tubbish1836
superfatted1841
pottle-bodied1842
pincushiony1851
opulent1882
well-covered1884
well-upholstered1886
butterball1888
endomorphic1888
tisty-tosty1888
pachyntic1890
barrel-bodied1894
overweight1899
pussy-gutted1906
upholstered1924
1770 R. Cumberland Brothers ii. ix. 23 He..is a little peaking puling thing; I am a jolly portable man, as you see.
B. n.
1. In plural. Portable objects; belongings. Now rare.
ΘΚΠ
the world > movement > transference > [noun] > conveying or transporting > action of carrying > ability to be carried > that which is able to be carried
portables1708
carry-along1955
1708 tr. M. Alemán Life Guzman d’Alfarache I. i. i. i. 11 Having got all her Portables in a readiness, his next Business was to find an honest Christian Captain, who..might deliver him from his Apostacy, by transporting him to his own Country.
1757 T. Hale et al. Compl. Body Husbandry (new ed.) II. v. lxx. 209 The cheap conveying of all Sorts of Portables from Place to Place on good Roads.
1835 A. B. Longstreet Georgia Scenes 197 He had begun to pack up his portables, for removal to a more eligible station.
1883 J. Hay in Cent. Mag. Dec. 281/2 I don't doubt..but what we could pay ourselves well for the job,—spoil the 'Gyptians, you know,—forage on the enemy. Plenty of portables in them houses, eh!
1924 Times 5 May 11/3 A new large ‘pochette’..has almost a ‘record’ number of sections for holding necessary ‘portables’—purse, cigarettes, lipstick among them.
2. An appliance, device, or piece of machinery which is portable, esp. a compact electrical or electronic appliance which has its own power supply, enabling it to be carried and used anywhere; spec. a portable computer.
ΘΚΠ
society > communication > broadcasting > radio broadcasting > [noun] > radio set
portable1900
wireless set1907
wireless1909
crystal receiver1910
radio1912
radio set1912
box1916
crystal set1921
crystal radio1922
receiver1930
car radio1931
clock radio1946
transistor set1953
transistor radio1956
steam radio1957
transistor1961
tranny1969
Casseiver1976
society > occupation and work > equipment > machine > types of machine generally > [noun] > other types
screw-machine?1746
self-driving1859
jig1875
pop-up1880
portable1900
positioner1903
slave1940
mobile unit1968
society > computing and information technology > hardware > computer > [noun] > portable
portable1933
luggable1978
notebook computer1982
lap portable1983
laptop1983
transportable1983
lap-held1984
notebook1988
mobile device1989
notebook PC1989
notepad1991
digital assistant1992
personal digital assistant1992
netbook1999
society > communication > broadcasting > television > transmitting or receiving apparatus > [noun] > television set
television set1924
television1929
home video1949
TV1949
box1950
transistor set1953
telly1954
idiot box1955
monitor1957
boob tube1959
goggle-box1959
transportable1959
the tube1959
portable1960
set1961
widescreen1982
1900 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 20 Dec. 5/6 Gas and electric portables.
1933 Cosmopolitan Mar. 101/2 I doubt if Mrs. Norris could type out a really good chapter on her rickety portable.
1960 Life 5 Dec. 8 (advt.) This is the new Motorola portable—forerunner of all TV to come and gift idea of a lifetime.
1986 Guardian 14 Apr. 22/5 Portables should run for at least a few hours on batteries and be small enough to fit into a briefcase.
1999 BBC Music Mag. Apr. 59 Tiny portables resist jogging.
2001 Business 2.0 Aug.–Sept. 206/3 Some portables use touchpads for moving the cursor, while others use joystick nubbins embedded next to the keyboard's G key.
Compounds
portable classroom n. originally U.S. a trailer or transportable prefabricated building used as a temporary classroom.
ΚΠ
1908 Chicago Tribune 17 Oct. 1/4 The poorer children of Chicago are being taught in basement rooms, in ‘portable’ classrooms, and in half day divisions.
1929 Bismarck (N. Dakota) Tribune 18 Sept. 3/6 (heading) University to raze portable classrooms.
1994 Inuit Art Q. Spring 44/3 The Broughton Island Artists' Association has renovated a portable classroom.
portable gas n. (originally) gas held in compressed form to facilitate its transport to gaslit premises (now historical); (later) = bottled gas n. at bottled adj. 3.
ΚΠ
1821 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 111 159 Oil gas, when forcibly compressed in Gordon's portable gas lamp, deposits a portion of a highly volatile essential oil.
1823 Times 31 Jan. 3/7 The first meeting of the subscribers to the London Portable Gas Company, for the purpose of distributing compressed gas..by means of Mr. Gordon's patent lamps, was held on Wednesday.
1939 Times 21 Aug. 13/7 A portable gas in home cylinders meets every need of a household long accustomed to electricity.
1975 Times 27 Oct. 17/3 (headline) Portable gas expands into new markets.
1993 J. McCormick Pop. Theatres Nineteenth-Cent. France iii. 50 The new theatre..had more of the comfort and refinements of the theatres of the city, including gas lighting replacing the oil lamps. However, there was no mains gas, so portable gas had to be brought to the theatre regularly.
portable media player n. any of various hand-held electronic devices for playing digital audio files or other types of digital media.
ΚΠ
1998 Maximum PC Nov. 22 Rio Portable Media Player, a credit-card-sized device that lets you listen to MP3 files anywhere.
2012 CNET.com (Nexis) 4 Apr. When it comes to portable media players, there's no product I could recommend more highly than an iPod Touch.
portable pension n. a pension which may be transferred when an employee moves from one company to another (see sense A. 4b).
ΚΠ
1955 Jrnl. Statist. Assoc. 50 624 Such newer developments as investments in equities, portable pensions, [etc.].
1965 Times 27 Feb. p. iv/4 This will give Quebec citizens a portable pension plan, valid anywhere in Canada.
1996 Independent 7 Feb. ii. 11/4 I also started a number of pension plans in the late Eighties when the whole country was being pressurised into getting a portable pension.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2006; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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adj.n.c1450