different between companionable vs conversible

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

Etymology 1

Adjective

conversible (comparative more conversible, superlative most conversible)

1. (archaic) Capable of being converted.

   Synonym: convertible

   • a. 1661, Henry Hammond, Sermon 7 in Sermons Preached by Henry Hammond, London: Robert Pawlet, 1675, p. 96,^[1]

     [It is] from the not exercising of faith actually, that I ever sin; and every man in the same degree, that he is a sinner, so far is he an unbeliever. So that this conversible retrogradous Sorites may shut up all.

   • 1890, Henry James, The Tragic Muse, London: Macmillan, Volume 2, Chapter 9, p. 127,^[2]

     “But what do you call right? What’s your canon of certainty there?”

     “The conscience that’s in us—that charming, conversible, infinite thing, the intensest thing we know. […] ”

2. (obsolete) Capable of being substituted or swapped (with another thing).

   Synonym: interchangeable

   • 1683, William Duncombe, Forgetfulness of God the Great Plague of Man’s Heart, London: Thomas Simmons, p. 78,^[3]

     Reciprocal signs I call those that are conversible with the thing they are the signs of.

   • 1690, Thomas Brown, The Late Converts Exposed, London: Thomas Bennet, p. 55,^[4]

     [These] were with me, terms full as conversible as —

Etymology 2

converse +? -ible

Adjective

conversible (comparative more conversible, superlative most conversible)

1. Alternative form of conversable