Linguistic question: 'e' ending + 'able' suffix

Question

Hello,how can I call in English a thing which e.g. "cannot be closed"? Uncloseable or unclosable? Are they any rules for leaving or throwing away the final letter E while adding the -able suffix?Btw. unclos(e)able or inclos(e)able?PS. English is not my mother tongue, but I want to harm it as little as possible.thanks in advance,MR

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Hello, how can I call in English a thing which e.g. "cannot be closed"? Uncloseable or unclosable? Are they any ... English is not my mother tongue, but I want to harm it as little as possible. thanks in advance, MR[/nq]
Both US and UK dictionaries show "closeable" with no mention of "closable". There's a verb "inclose", but it's a variant spelling of "enclose", so "uncloseable" and "incloseable" would have entirely different meanings.
Questions like yours can be answered properly only by reference to a good dictionary. There are pairs like "judgement" and "judgment" that are shown as alternatives in both US and UK dictionaries, but in the UK dictionary there's a note saying that "judgment" is "the usual form in legal use".
In my writing I make it a practice to include the "e" when adding "-able", but if I'm writing something that I want to be as acceptable as possible, I will sometimes look up a word of that type in a dictionary if I'm not certain of the customary spelling.

You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary and to spend time browsing it thinking up a lot of words ending in "-able" to see if there's a pattern. In choosing your dictionary, you should decide whether you want to prefer British or American usage, because there are differences between the two.
And you may sometimes even find differences between two American dictionaries or between two British dictionaries.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Hello, how can I call in English a thing which ... harm it as little as possible. thanks in advance, MR[/nq]
[nq:1]Both US and UK dictionaries show "closeable" with no mention of "closable".[/nq]
Not true. Closable is in the Concise OED.
(snip)
[nq:1]You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary and to spend time browsing it thinking up a lot of ... dictionary, you should decide whether you want to prefer British or American usage, because there are differences between the two.[/nq]
Considering the group you would do better to make it a British dictionary.

Andy Leighton => (Email Removed)
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" - Robert Rankin, They Came And Ate Us

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary ... or American usage, because there are differences between the two.[/nq]
[nq:1]Considering the group you would do better to make it a British dictionary.[/nq]
And a good British dictionary, such as the Concise OED, will note US spellings where they differ from British ones.

John Hall
"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing."
Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]PS. English is not my mother tongue, but I want to harm it as little as possible. thanks in advance, MR[/nq]
Yeah. I guess the English are quite capable of harming the language themselves, there's no need for us foreigners to intervene.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Both US and UK dictionaries show "closeable" with no mention of "closable".[/nq]
[nq:1]Not true. Closable is in the Concise OED.[/nq]
Which edition? I see now that it is in the COD Eighth Edition , and "closeable" is not, so far as I've found anyway. But I also see now that in the more modern New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary , there is "closable" with variant "closeable".
And it is true that Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary also has "closable" with variant "closeable".
I apologize for putting out bad information.
About "inconsolable", Marteno in view of his original question should find it interesting that there is no "unconsolable".

However, at sometime in the past forty years, I have opined in AUE that since "un-" is a productive English prefix, there's nothing wrong with our writing "unconsolable", even though it is not in dictionaries. The meaning is perfectly clear and it obeys carefully the formation of negatives with "un-". The distinguished John Lawler posted at that time to agree with me. (I wonder if he still would.)

But now there's a counter-argument to that, illustrated by my recent observation that "unclose" and "inclose" have entirely different meanings, implying that "uncloseable" and "incloseable" would have quite different meanings. So we have to be careful when forming "un-" words as equivalents to "in-" words.
By the way, I am startled to see that a full-text search of the Oxford English Dictionary finds no occurrences of words starting with any of "closa", "closea", "unclosa", or "unclosea".
[nq:1](snip)[/nq]
[nq:2]You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary ... or American usage, because there are differences between the two.[/nq]
[nq:1]Considering the group you would do better to make it a British dictionary.[/nq]
And, if you don't mind spending a few more pounds, a Shorter Oxford is greatly superior to a Concise Oxford . I have the New Shorter Oxford (on disk), vintage about 1993, and there has been at least one later edition since then.
About the Shorter Oxford s, it's important to know that they are not abridgements of the Oxford English Dictionary . The latter is for the most part made up of material that hasn't been brought up-to-date since it was first written over 100 years ago. In contrast, the preface to the New Shorter Oxford emphasizes that it is not simply an abridgement of the OED , and that every entry has been reviewed and updated where necessary. I assume a similar statement could be made about later Shorter Oxford s, although I haven't had an opportunity to see any later edition.

Bob Cunningham, aka Sydney Sorenson, Southern California, USofA, WAmE.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1] the >preface to the New Shorter Oxford emphasizes that it is not simply an abridgement of the OED , and that every entry has been reviewed and updated where necessary.[/nq]
I shouldn't have written "that every entry has been reviewed and updated where necessary". It's ambiguous. "Where necessary" can be take to apply to both "reviewed" and "updated", while my intent was to apply it only to the second one. I could better have written "that every entry has been reviewed and where necessary updated".

The actual words in the Preface to the NSOED (in the hardback version) are
Every entry has been written afresh, taking into account the linguistic evidence of the Dictionary Department's extensive quotation files and computer databases.

Bob Cunningham > "He whom the gods love dies young, while WAmE > he is in health, has his senses and his

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Not true. Closable is in the Concise OED.[/nq]
[nq:1]Which edition? I see now that it is in the COD Eighth Edition ,[/nq]
Yep I have the Eighth Edition near my desk.
[nq:2]Considering the group you would do better to make it a British dictionary.[/nq]
[nq:1]And, if you don't mind spending a few more pounds, a Shorter Oxford is greatly superior to a ... New Shorter Oxford (on disk), vintage about 1993, and there has been at least one later edition since then.[/nq]
For everyday use I prefer a Chambers. I don't have a SOED - not enough room on my shelves. Although I have a library not far (about 5 minutes walk) from me where I can access one - plus online access to OED Online via the library.

Andy Leighton => (Email Removed)
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" - Robert Rankin, They Came And Ate Us

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Which edition? I see now that it is in the COD Eighth Edition ,[/nq]
[nq:1]Yep I have the Eighth Edition near my desk.[/nq]
The Eighth Edition is particularly useful for seeing how English people used to talk. It follows traditional Received Pronunciation, while NSOED , and I think later COD s, follow more modern speech.

The only difference I know of for sure is the pronunciation of terminal "y" in words like "pretty" and "city". Traditional RP pronounced it like the "i" in "sit", while modern British speech seems to pronounce it for the most part like "e" in "bean".

There may be other differences that I haven't come across.
[nq:2]And, if you don't mind spending a few more pounds, ... there has been at least one later edition since then.[/nq]
[nq:1]For everyday use I prefer a Chambers.[/nq]
I have Chambers 1993, and I like it a lot. However, I greatly dislike their way of putting a lot of things in run-ons that would be more useful as separate entries.
For what it's worth, I didn't find "closable", "closeable", "unclosable", or "uncloseable" in my Chambers .
[nq:1]I don't have a SOED - not enough room on my shelves.[/nq]
But it's available on CD, and that uses very little shelf room. I have NSOED on CD, and I think now and then about getting the CD for a later edition of SOED .
[nq:1]Although I have a library not far (about 5 minutes walk) from me where I can access one - plus online access to OED Online via the library.[/nq]
I have online OED the same way, but I wish there weren't so much of it that hasn't been updated since it was written over a hundred years ago. It's really only useful for its historical data. Any definition of a modern word that you can find in OED you can also find in an updated version in an SOED . Only the historical examples are much diminished.

Usenet · Answer

At 15:56:13 on Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham (Email Removed) wrote in (Email Removed):
[nq:1]About "inconsolable", Marteno in view of his original question should find it interesting that there is no "unconsolable".[/nq]
Plus, "inconsolable" has the stress on the second syllable, whereas "unconsolable", if it existed, would have the stress on the third syllable.
[nq:1]But now there's a counter-argument to that, illustrated by my recent observation that "unclose" and "inclose" have entirely different meanings, implying that "uncloseable" and "incloseable" would have quite different meanings.[/nq]
And while "incloseable" would be stressed on the second syllable, "uncloseable" would, I think, have an equal stress on the first and second syllables, as if it were "un-closeable".

Molly Mockford
Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.) (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

Usenet · Answer

At 16:31:49 on Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham (Email Removed) wrote in (Email Removed):
[nq:1]I shouldn't have written "that every entry has been reviewed and updated where necessary". It's ambiguous. "Where necessary" can be ... only to the second one. I could better have written "that every entry has been reviewed and where necessary updated".[/nq]
Your second version still has an air of not-quite-right about it. This kind of situation - a subsidiary parenthesis - calls for commas (or brackets, or dashes)(0). "...that every entry has been reviewed and, where necessary, updated" is totally unambiguous.
(0) How many self-references can you spot?

Molly Mockford
Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.) (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

Linguistic question: 'e' ending + 'able' suffix

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions