Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality or condition of being (easily) recognized, known, or comprehended.

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

  • noun The quality or state of being knowable.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Chaos theory, similarlyeven if it be reconciled with classical physics as Plotnitsky suggestputs absolute limits to the "knowability" of the underlying deterministic origins of a world that can only be understood as a dynamically emergent system.

    Complexity and Order. 2001

  • The Keynesian approach, with its emphasis on constant fiscal tinkering on the economy, relies far more on certainty and "knowability" than monetarism.

    The American Spectator 2008

  • "knowability" of the real world, but they often assume that the concrete particulars of the world are adequately described by the abstractions that have proved useful for limited purposes in their own disciplines - an assumption that Whitehead called the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness."

    911Blogger.com - Paying Attention to 9/11 Related News 2010

  • Respect for precedent, when it exists, promotes knowability of the law, consistency in application of the law, predictability of legal outcomes, and other desirable ends.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen 2010

  • That is a role that celebrities from robber barons to rock stars have served ever since, combining "knowability with distance" to make themselves at once intensely familiar and strangely remote.

    Intensely Familiar, Yet Strangely Remote 2010

  • Before grappling with the all-important advent of radio, television and film, he treats us to a discussion of how the gossip columns of mass - circulation newspapers played with the dialectics of attraction and repulsion, knowability and distance in the lives of the Gilded Age's newly rich, whether Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Astors, Morgans, Hearsts or Fricks.

    Intensely Familiar, Yet Strangely Remote 2010

  • Respect for precedent, when it exists, promotes knowability of the law, consistency in application of the law, predictability of legal outcomes, and other desirable ends.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen 2010

  • He has some great speeches but that does not translate into knowability as the executive of the most powerful country in the free world.

    Poll: Twenty-Eight Percent Of Hillary Supporters Would Back McCain If Obama Wins 2009

  • Must we tell Benjamin that he isno longer knowable according to the terms by which we have, conventionally, established knowability?

    Archive 2009-10-01 2009

  • Must we tell Benjamin that he isno longer knowable according to the terms by which we have, conventionally, established knowability?

    Difficulty 2009

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