different between bland vs tractable

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /blænd/
• Rhymes: -ænd

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Latin blandus (“pleasant, flattering”).

Adjective

bland (comparative blander, superlative blandest)

1. Having a soothing effect; not irritating or stimulating.

2. Lacking in taste, flavor, or vigor.
   • 2012, John Shepherd, David Horn, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World

     First and foremost, alternative country artists generally claim to reject mainstream country music as musically indistinguishable from bland pop music, as lyrically superficial, and as having no artistic merit […]

3. (figuratively) Lacking interest; boring; dull.
4. (now rare) Mild; soft, gentle, balmy; smooth in manner; suave.
   • 1818, John Keats, Sonnet:

     Where didst thou find, young Bard, thy sounding lyre? / Where the bland accent, and the tender tone?

Derived terms

• blanden
• blandness

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English blanden, blonden, from Old English blandan (“to blend, mix, mingle; trouble, disturb, corrupt”), from Proto-Germanic *blandan? (“to mix, blend”). Cognate with Icelandic blanda, Norwegian, Danish blande, Swedish blanda. See also blend.

Verb

bland (third-person singular simple present blands, present participle blanding, simple past and past participle blanded)

1. (transitive, Britain dialectal) To mix; blend; mingle.
2. (transitive, Britain dialectal) To connect; associate.

Etymology 3

From Middle English bland, from Old English bland, blond (“blending, mixture, confusion”), from Proto-Germanic *bland? (“a mixing, mixture”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?lend?- (“to grow turbid, dim, see badly, be blind”). Cognate with Icelandic blanda (“a mixture of liquids, especially of hot whey and water”).

Alternative forms

• blaind, blaund (Scotland)

Noun

bland (plural blands)

1. (Britain dialectal) Mixture; union.
2. A summer beverage prepared from the whey of churned milk, common among the inhabitants of the Shetland Islands.

Derived terms

• in bland

References

• bland in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Danish

Verb

bland

1. imperative of blande

German

Etymology

From Latin blandus.

Pronunciation

Adjective

bland (not comparable)

1. (medicine) bland

Declension

Further reading

• “bland” in Duden online

Icelandic

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /plant/
• Rhymes: -ant

Noun

bland n (genitive singular blands, no plural)

1. mix

Declension

Derived terms

• bland í poka

Related terms

• blanda

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

bland

1. imperative of blande

Norwegian Nynorsk

Verb

bland

1. imperative of blande

Swedish

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

Preposition

bland

1. among

English

Etymology

From Latin tract?bilis (“that may be touched, handled, or managed”), from tract? (“take in hand, handle, manage”), frequentative of trah? (“draw”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /?t?æk.t?.b?l/

Adjective

tractable (comparative more tractable, superlative most tractable)

1. (of people) Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed.

   Synonyms: docile, manageable, governable
2. (of a problem) Easy to deal with or manage
   • 1839, Charles Dickens Nicholas Nickleby, ch. 61:

     Of all the tractable, equal-tempered, attached, and faithful beings that ever lived, I believe he was the most so.
3. Capable of being shaped; malleable.
   • 1866, P. Le Neve Foster, "Report on the Art-Workmanship Prizes", reprinted in Journal of the Society of Arts, March 2, 1966:

     I need not point out the advantages of modelling in a material as durable as stone. . . . Mixed up with just enough water to form a stiff paste, it accommodates itself to the touch of the modelling tool. . . . There are two inherent difficulties in using it—one, it is not so tractable as clay. . . .

4. (obsolete) Capable of being handled or touched.

   Synonyms: palpable, practicable, feasible, serviceable

   • 1707, Thomas Brown, "Moll Quarles's Answer to Mother Creswell of Famous Memory" in The Second Volume of the Works of Mr. Tho. Brown, containing Letters from the Dead to the Living both Serious and Comical, part three, page 184:

     At lea?t five Hundred of the?e reforming Vultures are daily plundering our Pockets, and ran?acking our Hou?es, leaving me ?ometimes not one pair of Tractable Buttocks in my Vaulting-School to provide for my Family, or earn me ?o much as a Pudding for my next Sundays Dinner : [...]

5. (mathematics) Sufficiently operationalizable or useful to allow a mathematical calculation to proceed toward a solution.
   • 1987, Ira Horowitz, "Market Structure Implications of Export-Price Uncertainty," Managerial and Decision Economics, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 134:

     This assumption is in the Raiffa and Schlaifer (1961, p. 72) spirit of using ‘a little ingenuity. . . to find a tractable function’ to quantify risk-preferences and probability judgments so as to make the analysis feasible.

6. (computer science, of a decision problem) Algorithmically solvable fast enough to be practically relevant, typically in polynomial time.

Antonyms

• intractable

Related terms

• tractability
• tractableness
• tractably

Translations

References

• tractable at OneLook Dictionary Search