Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • That may be known; capable of being apprehended, understood, or ascertained.

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

  • adjective That may be known; capable of being discovered, understood, or ascertained.

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

  • adjective Capable of being known, understood or comprehended.

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

  • adjective capable of being known

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Attested since the 15th century; know +‎ -able

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Examples

  • This is one area I give postmodern Christians credit for - they embrace uncertainty, they question commonly held assumptions and structures, things are not as "knowable" - as definitive - as they are for the traditional evangelical.

    deCOMPOSE 2009

  • We should therefore feel compelled to grant Joyce's premise that there is such a complete non-moral genealogy only if we have already given up on the idea of knowable moral truths.

    Morality and Evolutionary Biology FitzPatrick, William 2008

  • Of course this principle must itself be knowable, that is, we get the following logical principle:

    Self-Reference Bolander, Thomas 2008

  • And, in either case, the sharp distinction between the real and the phenomenal vanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of consciousness, or different from ideas, but a reality related to consciousness, or, in other words, a knowable reality.

    Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Henry Jones 1887

  • I don't think that's knowable, which is why there may not be much that can be done to fix things until we see the actual debacle unfold.

    InvestmentNews.com Latest Headlines 2009

  • If in this way we are to understand any thing of God's nature, we must by consequence understand so much of our own nature: that is, that it is a reasonable nature, that it is an intelligent nature, that it is a nature capable of improving itself in point of knowledge, by ratiocination and discourse; and even of knowledge concerning the highest and greatest, and first knowable, that is God and the very nature of God.

    The Whole Works of the Rev. John Howe, M.A. with a Memoir of the Author. Vol. VI. 1630-1705 1822

  • Only, 'knowable' matters just to those who need rigid definitions.

    Monster 2010

  • But any further inquiry along those lines would have disclosed that the ISI was an original patron of the Taliban, a fact "knowable" by anyone yet inconvenient for the ISI's senior partner in Langley, Virginia, to admit.

    Aural History 2003

  • But any further inquiry along those lines would have disclosed that the ISI was an original patron of the Taliban, a fact "knowable" by anyone yet inconvenient for the ISI's senior partner in Langley, Virginia, to admit.

    Aural History 2003

  • For example, to define mind and to separate it from the rest of the knowable which is called matter, the general mode of reasoning is as follows: all the knowable which is apparent to our senses is essentially reduced to motion; "mind," that something which lives, feels, and judges, is reduced to "thought."

    The Mind and the Brain Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps Alfred Binet 1884

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