tractable
Americanadjective
-
easily managed or controlled; docile; yielding.
a tractable child; a tractable disposition.
- Synonyms:
- governable, willing, manageable
- Antonyms:
- stubborn
-
easily worked, shaped, or otherwise handled; malleable.
adjective
-
easily controlled or persuaded
-
readily worked; malleable
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of tractable
1495–1505; < Latin tractābilis, equivalent to tractā ( re ) to handle, deal with (frequentative of trahere to draw) + -bilis -ble
Explanation
If your little brother quietly obeys your instructions and waits for you at the food court while you and your friends wander around the mall, he's probably a tractable child, meaning he's obedient, flexible, and responds well to directions. Note the similarity between tractable and tractor. Both come from the Latin word tractare, which originally meant "to drag about." You can think of a tractable person as someone who can be dragged about easily, like a plow being dragged by a tractor.
Vocabulary lists containing tractable
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Animal Farm
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Recent activity by SoftBank includes its creation of a joint venture to build automated warehouses and investment in insurance tech company Tractable.
From Reuters • Aug. 7, 2023
Alex Dalyac, chief executive and co-founder of a computer vision start-up called Tractable, acknowledged that machine learning will soon produce fake audio and video that humans cannot distinguish from the real thing.
From New York Times • Feb. 20, 2018
To remedy this, he proposed balancing out the ledger with new categories such as “the Worst Editorial Page, the Most Compromised Local Paper, the Most Predictable Critic, and the Most Tractable White House Reporter.”
From Slate • Sep. 30, 2016
Tractable as they were in all other ways, anxious as they seemed to please him, on this one point they were obdurate: never would they stay together.
From Just David by Porter, Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
