Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being capable; capability: capacity.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being capable; capability; adequateness; competency.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or quality of being capable.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of being capable -- physically or intellectually or legally
  • noun an aptitude that may be developed

Etymologies

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Examples

  • These youngsters miss a chance to see their power in action and to wear or use visible proof of their capableness.

    Parent Talk Chick Moorman 1998

  • These youngsters miss a chance to see their power in action and to wear or use visible proof of their capableness.

    Parent Talk Chick Moorman 1998

  • These youngsters miss a chance to see their power in action and to wear or use visible proof of their capableness.

    Parent Talk Chick Moorman 1998

  • There seemed, somehow, to be a look of content and capableness about those heads bent so busily over the stitching.

    Emma McChesney and Co. Edna Ferber 1926

  • And then she stared hard at him, noting the steady, cold, alert eyes; the firm lips; the bigness of him, the atmosphere of capableness that seemed to surround him; the low-swung guns at his hips, with no flaps on the holster-tops, and the bottoms of the holsters tied to his leather chaps with rawhide thongs.

    'Drag' Harlan Charles Alden Seltzer 1908

  • She's got her mother's good looks and nice manners and -- and kind of genteelness, you understand, and with 'em she's got her dad's sense and capableness.

    Fair Harbor Joseph Crosby Lincoln 1907

  • He writes of "her desire to be taught and instructed in the knowledge of God; her capableness of understanding; her aptnesse and willingnesse to recieve anie good impression, and also the spiritual, besides her owne incitements stirring me up hereunto."

    Pioneers of the Old South: a chronicle of English colonial beginnings Mary Johnston 1903

  • What chiefly struck me about Mrs Brindley was her serene air of capableness, of having a self-confidence which experience had richly justified.

    The Grim Smile of the Five Towns Arnold Bennett 1899

  • In the harsh vanity of her conscious capableness and young strength she thought thus, half forgetting her own follies, and half excusing them on the ground of inexperience.

    The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett 1899

  • Her sober, kindly capableness evolved from the slovenly little house and the untended children, from the dusty rooms and neglected kitchen the kind of order and neatness which had been plain to see in Robin's more fortune-favoured apartment.

    Robin Frances Hodgson Burnett 1886

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