Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Capable of success or continuing effectiveness; practicable: synonym: possible.
  • adjective Capable of living, developing, or germinating under favorable conditions.
  • adjective Capable of living outside the uterus. Used of a fetus or newborn.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Capable of living; likely to live; specifically, capable of continued existence outside of the womb: noting a fetus. Seeviability, 1.

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

  • adjective (Law) Capable of living; born alive and with such form and development of organs as to be capable of living; -- said of a newborn, or a prematurely born, infant.

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

  • adjective Able to live on its own (as for a newborn.)
  • adjective Able to be done, possible.
  • adjective In (biology), able to live and develop.

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

  • adjective capable of being done with means at hand and circumstances as they are
  • adjective capable of life or normal growth and development

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from vie, life, from Old French, from Latin vīta; see gwei- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French, from Medieval Latin *vitabilis (“capable of life”), from Latin vita ("life"); see vital.

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