viable

Borrowed from French viable, with semantic influence of Latin viābilis (“passable”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈvaɪəbəl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪəbəl
• Hyphenation: vi‧a‧ble

viable (comparative more viable, superlative most viable)

1. Able to live on its own (as for a newborn).
2. Able to be done, possible, practicable, feasible.

   a viable option

3. Capable of working successfully
   • 2023 March 8, David Clough, “The long road that led to Beeching”, in RAIL, number 978, page 42:

     Barker believed that evidence was emerging that a "solid proportion" of operations were "grossly uneconomic", and that no amount of improvement in equipment would make them viable. He suggested that "while the superstructure of the report is correct, the foundations require radical re-examination".

4. (biology) Able to live and develop.

• inviable

viable (plural viables)

1. (biology) An organism that is able to live and develop.

• “viable”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “viable”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

From vie (“life”) +‎ -able.

viable (plural viables)

1. viable, feasible

• → Portuguese: viável

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈbjable/ [ˈbja.β̞le]
• Rhymes: -able
• Syllabification: via‧ble

viable m or f (masculine and feminine plural viables)

1. viable

• “viable”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024