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What are general rules of thumb for creating adjectives with -able? I wanted to denote an object as having an ability to be encouraged, but "encourageable" and "encouragable" both are yielded as incorrect words by spell check and standard English dictionary used by Mac OS X dictionary widget. Is "encourageable" or "encouragable" a correct word/form for denoting an object having an ability to be encouraged?

Tushar Raj
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Drew
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  • Maybe it was a word, but everyone kept hearing incorrigible. – Sven Yargs Apr 28 '15 at 05:26
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    encourageable adjective (comparative: more encourageable; superlative: most encourageable) 1.Able to be encouraged; suggestible. 2.Misspelling of incorrigible. see Wiktionary encourageable –  Apr 28 '15 at 05:31
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    Where Have All the Flowers Gone? - Page 62, Alice Gerard - 2010 - I think the school encouraged the people who were encouragable but didn't particularly change anybody's path, if they were not already interested in learning. – Marius Hancu Apr 28 '15 at 06:49
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    For more general 'enabling' of an existing word there is some info here http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10440/creating-words-with-able-suffix – Frank Apr 28 '15 at 07:29

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It may not be a very common word, but it is a word alright. See this ngram

Like Little Eva posted, wiktionary actually lists this word.

Tushar Raj
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  • But with very very limited examples. It is not in the OED whilst inflections such as encouragement, encouraging,.. etc are. I would say 'The study of grammar is something to be encouraged'. I can't imagine anyone saying it was encourageable. – WS2 Apr 28 '15 at 06:02
  • Many of the hits on the first page of that n-gram are discussions of the word itself (as in dictionaries), or cases of it being used in dialogue by speakers who are either non-native, or playing with their words. – herisson Apr 28 '15 at 06:28
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    I could imagine using it in a situation such as this: "He discovered that his students were not readily encourageable." – Sven Yargs Apr 28 '15 at 06:39