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ANSWERABLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Morally or legally responsible to a higher authority
Example:
parents are answerable for their child's acts
Classified under:
Similar:
responsible (worthy of or requiring responsibility or trust; or held accountable)
Derivation:
answerability; answerableness (responsibility to someone or for some activity)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Capable of being answered
Classified under:
Similar:
soluble (susceptible of solution or of being solved or explained)
Derivation:
answer (understand the meaning of)
Context examples:
This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was caught by Elizabeth, and, as it assured her that Darcy was not less answerable for Wickham's absence than if her first surmise had been just, every feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate disappointment, that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to the polite inquiries which he directly afterwards approached to make.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
But, even supposing it is so, allowing Mr. Crawford to have all the claims which his sisters think he has, how was I to be prepared to meet him with any feeling answerable to his own?
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
However small Elinor's general dependence on Lucy's veracity might be, it was impossible for her on serious reflection to suspect it in the present case, where no temptation could be answerable to the folly of inventing a falsehood of such a description.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
But the success has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence, as the prescription requires.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said, “he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that allowance was less answerable for them. That this breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible: and it appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me, that I received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited. That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where, during his residence, he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the struldbrugs before their eyes.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
