endurable
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of endurable
Explanation
If you can tolerate something, it's endurable. Getting a cavity filled at the dentist, while not very fun, is still endurable. Use the adjective endurable to describe something that's no fun, but that a person can generally deal with. Standardized tests are endurable, and eating soggy, overcooked broccoli is endurable. A long ride on a stormy sea — as long as the ship doesn't capsize — is also endurable. To endure something is to withstand it — if it's endurable, it can be endured. The word is rooted in the Latin indurare, "to make hard or firm."
Vocabulary lists containing endurable
The Bluest Eye
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The Voyage of the Frog
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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.
Could a cold plunge be not only endurable but enjoyable?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025
It made everything feel temporary and endurable, and it allowed me to dream in a way.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 16, 2023
Perhaps this is what Rothko meant when he told a group of art students that he included in his paintings a measure of hope: ‘‘10 percent to make the tragic concept more endurable.’’
From New York Times ● Aug. 23, 2017
Twitter and the connected audience felt like a relief last night, if only because it made watching the Cleveland spectacle so much more endurable, to crack jokes with another community of amateurs.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 20, 2016
The coroner’s men did what they could to make the viewing as endurable as possible.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
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.
