different between companionable vs associable

English

Etymology

companion +? -able

Adjective

companionable (comparative more companionable, superlative most companionable)

1. Having the characteristics of a worthy companion; friendly and sociable.

   • She returned presently, bringing a smoking basin and a basket of work; and, having placed the former on the hob, drew in her seat, evidently pleased to find me so companionable.

   • 1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1910, Chapter V, p. 178, [1]

     I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

   • 1887, Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography, translated by John Addington Symonds, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, Chapter CXXI, p. 240, [2]

     All the disagreeable circumstances of my prison had become, as it were, to me friendly and companionable; not one of them gave me annoyance.

   • 1908, G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1910, Chapter IX, p. 154, [3]

     Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, and a companionable silence fell between the three men.

   • 1914, James Stephens, The Demi-Gods, New York: Macmillan, 1921, Book II, pp. 126-7, [4]

     They are a companionable food; they make a pleasant, crunching noise when they are bitten, and so, when one is eating carrots, one can listen to the sound of one's eating and make a story from it.

   • 1992, Toni Morrison, Jazz, New York: Vintage, 2004, p. 100,

     Bottles of rye, purgative waters and eaux for every conceivable toilette made a companionable click in his worn carpet bag.

Derived terms

Translations

English

Adjective

associable (comparative more associable, superlative most associable)

1. Capable of being associated or joined.
   • 1855, Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology

     We know feelings to be associable only by the proved ability of one to revive another.

2. (obsolete) sociable; companionable
3. (medicine, obsolete) Liable to be affected by sympathy with other parts; said of organs, nerves, muscles, etc.
   • 1802, Samuel l. Mitchill and Edward Miller, "Remarks on the Sympathy of the Stomach", in The Medical Repository

     the stomach, the most associable of all the organs of the animal body