Tractable

/ˈtɹæk.tə.bəl/ · adjective

Meaning

(of people) Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed..

Definitions by Sense

1. (of people) Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed.
2. (of a problem) Easy to deal with or manage.
3. Capable of being shaped; malleable.
4. (obsolete) Capable of being handled or touched.
5. (mathematics) Sufficiently operationalizable or useful to allow a mathematical calculation to proceed toward a solution.
6. (computer science, of a decision problem) Algorithmically solvable fast enough to be practically relevant, typically in polynomial time.

Example Sentences

"Tess is queer." "But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."

But once in London Jane Porter was no more tractable than she had been in Baltimore. She found one excuse after another, […]

I have always found horses, an animal I am attached to, very tractable when treated with humanity and steadiness.

Of all the tractable, equal-tempered, attached, and faithful beings that ever lived, I believe he was the most so.

[T]his matter of the vanishing bridge must have been arranged in order to put him in a properly subdued and tractable frame of mind.

Some masters can be quite kind if you're meek and tractable.

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. . . .

At leaſt five Hundred of theſe reforming Vultures are daily plundering our Pockets, and ranſacking our Houſes, leaving me ſometimes not one pair of Tractable Buttocks in my Vaulting-School to provide for my Family, or earn me ſo much as a Pudding for my next Sundays Dinner : [...]

Synonyms for tractable

Antonyms for tractable

Related Words

Word Forms

• more tractable
• most tractable

Usage Notes

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