tractable means capable of being easily led, taught, or managed. It carries an Arena rating of 1619, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, tractable ranks #967 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #1,000 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #1,707 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #4,206 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
tractable is pronounced /ˈtɹæk.tə.bəl/.
Why “tractable” is a great word
Easily managed, guided, or taught. From Middle English tractable, tractabel, from Latin tractābilis ("that may be touched, handled, or managed"), from tractō ("take in hand, handle, manage"), frequentative of trahō ("draw"), first attested in English in the early 15th century. Unlike "docile," which implies a temperamental willingness to submit, or "amenable," which suggests a reasoned agreement to persuasion, tractable describes a quality of fundamental manageability. It is the pliant willow branch that holds the form you bend it to, the well-bitted horse that answers the lightest tug of the rein, or the logical proof that unfolds neatly from its premises—a quiet testament to the world’s rare but reliable yieldings, where cooperation feels less a choice than a property of the material itself.
Etymology
From Middle English tractable, tractabel, from Latin tractābilis (“that may be touched, handled, or managed”), from tractō (“take in hand, handle, manage”), frequentative of trahō (“draw”).
adj
- Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed.e.g.“"Tess is queer." "But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."” — 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 45:
- Easy to deal with or manage.e.g.“I have always found horses, an animal I am attached to, very tractable when treated with humanity and steadiness.” — 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “Some Instances of the Folly which the Ignorance of Women Generates; with Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement that a Revolution in Female Manners
- Capable of being shaped; malleable.
- Capable of being handled or touched.
- Sufficiently operationalizable or useful to allow a mathematical calculation to proceed toward a solution.
- Algorithmically solvable fast enough to be practically relevant, typically in polynomial time.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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