answerable

adj

Etymology: Etymology tree English answer Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlis Proto-Italic *-ðlis Latin -bilis Latin -ābilis Old French -ablebor. Middle English -able English -able English answerable From answer + -able.

1. Required to justify one's actions (to somebody); accountable, responsible.

   “1731, Jonathan Swift, “The Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man, with respect to Religion and Government” in Miscellanies, London: Benjamin Motte and Charles Bathurst, Volume I, Section 2, p. 91, Should any Man argue, that […] he cannot be justly punished, but is answerable only to God […]”

2. Able to be answered.

   “Is my question answerable on basis of the reading alone or does it go outside the information given in the story?”

3. Correspondent, in accordance; comparable (to).

   “What wit and policie of man is answerable to their discreet and orderly course?”

   “To this revelation he assented the sooner, as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the Apostle to the Thessalonians, Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.”

4. Proportionate; commensurate in amount; suitable.

   “[…] at my farm / I have a hundred milch-kine to the pail, / Six score fat oxen standing in my stalls, / And all things answerable to this portion.”

   “By my other wife I had a daughter, so hard favoured, so foule and ill faced, that I thinke a grove full of golden trees; and the leaves of Rubies and Dyamonds, would not bee a dowrie aunswerable to her deformitie.”

5. Of an argument: capable of being answered or refuted; admitting a satisfactory answer.

   “[T]he argument, though ſubtle, is yet anſwerable.”