Dictionary

wageable en · ADJ

Etymology

From wage + -able.

Meanings

1. Capable of being waged or fought.
   • This book seeks grounds for a wageable debate in philosophical anthropology by exploring critical attitudes toward different historical anthropologies and the narratives they can release or, perforce, repress. 2010, Hermann Rebel, When Women Held the Dragon's Tongue:
   • The Soviets believe nuclear war is wageable and winnable, which is not to say they desire one or want to start one. 1990, Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Richard H. Shultz, U.S. Defense Policy in an Era of Constrained Resources, page 312:
   • Possibly the contest was open to all school children; but our guess is that it was wageable among only subscribers to the American Boy. 1946, Franklin Pierce Adams, Nods and Becks, page 194:
   • He thus participates in the general tendency of the time to numb critical attention to the problems in American society, to see the war as wageable only to the extent that it was an uncomplicated crusade. 2001, James F. Slevin, Introducing English, page 140:
2. For which wages can be paid.
   • ...but this money was only lent, when he came to wageable ore he was paid for his ore at the current bargain price less the amount of lent money he had received. 1958, Archaeologia Aeliana:
   • Insecurity of employment, which is a prerequisite of work discipline, contradicts capital's requirement for unlimited quantities of potentially wageable labour. 1978, Suzanne de Brunhoff, The State, Capital and Economic Policy, page 10:
   • However, this outcome was to be expected, given that Western capitalism is framed within a patriarchal ideology that did not incorporate women as "wageable" productive labor outside the household. 2005, Ousseina Alidou, Engaging Modernity:

Forms