passable

English

Etymology

From French passable, equivalent to pass +‎ -able.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpæsəbəl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Adjective

passable (comparative more passable, superlative most passable)

1. That may be passed or traversed.
2. Tolerable; adequate; no more than satisfactory.
   • 2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.

   • 2023 March 21, Ian Bogost, “Is This the Singularity for Standardized Tests?”, in The Atlantic‎^[1], archived from the original on 25 March 2023:

     AIs are no longer just producing passable five-paragraph essays. Now they’re excelling at the SAT, “earning” a score of 1410.

3. (sociology) able to "pass", or be accepted as a member of a race, sex or other group to which society would not otherwise regard one as belonging.
   • 2014, Paul Stryker, Confessions of a Sex Offender, page 33:

     The idea of something, or someone, being unusual and sexual is intoxicating. I concluded that if I ever met a very passable transsexual and we were attracted to one another, I'd go bisexual and pursue the relationship.

Synonyms

• (adequate): See Thesaurus:satisfactory

Derived terms

• passability
• passableness
• passably
• unpassable

Translations

That may be passed or traversed

• Bulgarian: проходим (bg) (prohodim)
• Catalan: transitable
• Finnish: kulkukelpoinen
• German: passierbar (de)
• Greek: διαβατός (el) m (diavatós)

  Ancient Greek: βάσιμος (básimos)

• Italian: passabile (it)
• Latin: pervius
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: farbar

  Nynorsk: farbar

• Polish: przekraczalny
• Spanish: pasable (es), pasadero (es)

Tolerable; satisfactory; adequate

• Bulgarian: сносен (bg) (snosen)
• Catalan: passable (ca)
• Finnish: välttävä (fi)
• Galician: pasadeiro
• German: passabel (de)
• Greek: μέτριος (el) (métrios), υποφερτός (el) (ypofertós)
• Hungarian: elfogadható (hu)
• Icelandic: slarkfær, sæmilegur (is)
• Portuguese: aceitável (pt), passável (pt) (Brazil)
• Scottish Gaelic: cuibheasach
• Spanish: pasadero (es)

able to be accepted as a member of a race, sex or other group

• Portuguese: passável (pt)

French

Etymology

From passer +‎ -able.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pa.sabl/ ~ /pɑ.sabl/

• Audio (France (Brétigny-sur-Orge)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

Adjective

passable (plural passables)

1. passable; tolerable; fair

Derived terms

• passablement

Further reading

• “passable”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

German

Pronunciation

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

Adjective

passable

1. inflection of passabel:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular