Eatable or Edible

Question

Both words according to the Oxford Dictionary can be used. But I was never taught "eatable" my whole life, when do you actually use it?

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

Eatable is a very old form. I have not seen it used recently.
Here is a quote with "eatable"

The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass took a key from her pocket, and opening the safe, brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge. This she placed before the small servant, ordering her to sit down before it, and then, taking up a great carving-knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it upon the carving-fork.
'Do you see this?' said Miss Brass, slicing off about two square inches of cold mutton, after all this preparation, and holding it out on the point of the fork.
The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see every shred of it, small as it was, and answered, 'yes.'
'Then don't you ever go and say,' retorted Miss Sally, 'that you hadn't meat here. There, eat it up.'
This was soon done. 'Now, do you want any more?' said Miss Sally.
The hungry creature answered with a faint 'No.' They were evidently going through an established form.
'You've been helped once to meat,' said Miss Brass, summing up the facts; 'you have had as much as you can eat, you're asked if you want any more, and you answer, 'no!' Then don't you ever go and say you were allowanced, mind that.'
With those words, Miss Sally put the meat away and locked the safe, and then drawing near to the small servant, overlooked her while she finished the potatoes.

Yoong Liat · Answer

As adjectives, these two words are sometimes interchangeable. They are often used in different ways. Eatable tends to refer to food that is prepared or ready for consumption and suggests that it is really palatable: These potatoes are are just about eatable now, though they could do with another ten minutes in the oven.

Edible tends to refer to kinds of food that can be eaten, irrespective of their present state of preparedness: an edible fungus. Flour, for example, is obviously edible, but it is not really eatable.

A substance that is poisonous is not edible: an inedible wild berry.

Edible food that has not been cooked is not eatable.

Cooked food that has become stale is not eatable.

(The Right Word at the Right Time)

Eatable or Edible

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions