different between tractable vs obedient

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 obedient, from Old French obedient, from Latin oboedi?ns, present active participle of oboedi? (“obey”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /??bi?d??nt/, /???bi?d??nt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /??bidi?nt/, /o??bidi?nt/
• Hyphenation: obe?di?ent

Adjective

obedient (comparative more obedient, superlative most obedient)

1. Willing to comply with the commands, orders, or instructions of those in authority.

Synonyms

• hearsome
• dutiful

Antonyms

• disobedient
• dominant

Related terms

• obedience
• obey

Translations

Noun

obedient (plural obedients)

1. One who obeys.
   • 2002, John Michael Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (page 48)

     Damn the obedients and hail the defiants if you will; the experiment does not motivate confidence about how particular subjects would behave in markedly dissimilar situations.

Further reading

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

Catalan

Etymology

From Latin oboedi?ns, present active participle of oboedi? (“obey”).

Pronunciation

• (Balearic) IPA^(key): /o.b?.di?ent/
• (Central) IPA^(key): /u.b?.di?en/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /o.be.di?ent/

Adjective

obedient (masculine and feminine plural obedients)

1. obedient

   Antonym: desobedient

Derived terms

• obedientment

Related terms

• obediència
• obeir

Further reading

• “obedient” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Latin

Verb

ob?dient

1. third-person plural future active indicative of ob?di?

Old French

Etymology

From Latin oboedi?ns, present active participle of oboedi? (“obey”).

Adjective

obedient m (oblique and nominative feminine singular obedient or obediente)

1. obedient

Declension