Dictionary

motionable en · ADJ

Etymology

From motion + -able.

Meanings

1. Able to be moved or set in motion.
   • The girth ofit and the wharf of it and the wall; Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; […] 2007, Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature:
   • Yet found he not on heaven's face A task of cloud to clear ; There was no speck that he might chase Off the blue hemisphere, Nor vapour from the land to drive: The frost-bound country held Nought motionable or alive, […] 1899, Robert Seymour Bridges, Poetical Works of Robert Bridges:
   • On the back of the sheet of paper on which he wrote this poem Hopkins scribbled one of his only poems about the sort of men he knew at Oxford: Denis, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit Caps occasion with an intellectual fit. 2012, Denis Healey, My Secret Planet:
   • Sway, flowers, leaning like reeds in a wave, More motionable than insects. 2006, Theodore Roethke, David Wagoner, Straw for the Fire:
2. Able to be made as a motion.
   • If the fact of insurance coverage is omitted from the petition, will a mere statement that the claim will be unaffected by insovency of the estate suffice, or is this motionable? 1962 December 24, Stanley B. Kent, “Notification of Tort Claims Against Decedent's Estates: A Trap for the Unwary Lawyer”, in The Ohio Bar, volume 35, number 50:
   • No that's not a motionable motion I will reframe it we must vote on whether to be implicit or explicit and if the latter then vote on the positive or negative modalities. 2012, Christine Brooke-Rose, The Brooke-Rose Omnibus:
   • Some attribute it to uninspiring motions—but a glance at them does not suggest that the good days (except for the excellent 'King and Country' motion harking back to historic Union debates when another Amplefordian was then also President ) were any more motionable than the bad were motionless. 1977, The Ampleforth Journal - Volumes 82-83, page 101:

Forms