Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Being such that formal argument or discussion is possible.
- adjective Open to dispute; questionable.
- adjective In dispute, as land or territory claimed by more than one country.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Admitting of debate or argument; disputable; subject to controversy or contention; questionable: as, a debatable question; debatable claims.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Liable to be debated; disputable; subject to controversy or contention; open to question or dispute.
- adjective a tract of land between the Esk and the Sark, claimed by both England and Scotland; the Batable Ground.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Controversial . Not fully proved, open todebate , sometimes used humorously. - adjective Of a person,
argumentative . - adjective A fitting subject for debate.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective open to argument or debate
- adjective capable of being disproved
- adjective open to doubt or debate
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Here we have a court ruling relying on a debatable interpretation of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. The reason I say "debatable" is that for two other different cases the court has interpreted the same article in exactly the opposite sense.
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What IS debatable is who we want as the VP, Chief of Staff, NSA, and other vital positions that will augment her admitted lack of experience.
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That they see such norms as so ‘obvious’ and non-debatable is the epitomy of colonial arrogance.
Global Voices in English » Syria: Snag Hits Blogging Contest 2009
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The status of Massachusetts health care, while debatable, is irrelevant to another in a long list of episodes where Crazy Shelly has simply lied.
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Abruptly provoked by his own limitations, angry, too, with his erratic mental departure from the realm of reason into the realm of fantasy -- for so he called the debatable land over which intuition held sway -- Artois hounded out his mood and turned upon himself.
The Call of the Blood Robert Smythe Hichens 1907
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What’s debatable is how hard Obama tried, because it’s hard to do counterfactuals and what ifs.
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What’s debatable is given the small size of the far left, how many are just rageaholic douchebags and get off on insulting people and how many aren’t, but just have far left goals.
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Saying that Europe’s economy becoming superior to the U.S., then, while debatable, is not “staggeringly off the mark.”
Matthew Yglesias » Staggeringly Off-the-Mark Forecasts of European Economic Preeminence 2010
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* What’s not debatable is that this process highlighted — and worsened — the virtually complete powerlessness of the Left and progressives generally in Washington.
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Saying that Europe’s economy becoming superior to the U.S., then, while debatable, is not “staggeringly off the mark.”
Matthew Yglesias » Staggeringly Off-the-Mark Forecasts of European Economic Preeminence 2010
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