different between tractable vs agreeable

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

English

Etymology

From Middle English agreable, from Old French agreable; displaced native Old English cweme (“pleasing, agreeable”). Equivalent to agree +? -able.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /????i??bl/

Adjective

agreeable (comparative more agreeable, superlative most agreeable)

1. pleasant to the senses or the mind

   • the train of agreeable reveries.

2. (dated) Willing; ready to agree or consent.
   • 1529, Hugh Latimer, sermon in Cambridge

     These Frenchmen give unto the said captain of Calais a great sum of money, so that he will be but content and agreeable that they may enter into the said town.

3. Agreeing or suitable; followed by to, or rarely by with.

   Synonyms: conformable, correspondent, concordant
4. In pursuance, conformity, or accordance; used adverbially

Synonyms

• (pleasing, pleasant): See Thesaurus:pleasant
• (willing): See Thesaurus:acquiescent
• (conforming): See Thesaurus:agreeable

Translations

Noun

agreeable (plural agreeables)

1. Something pleasing; anything that is agreeable.
   • 1855, Blackwood's magazine (volume 77, page 331)

     The disagreeables of travelling are necessary evils, to be encountered for the sake of the agreeables of resting and looking round you.

Further reading

• agreeable in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• agreeable in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.