Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Carried or moved with ease: a portable typewriter; a portable generator.
- adj. Capable of being transferred from one employer to another. Used of an employee benefit.
- adj. Computer Science Relating to or being software that can run on two or more kinds of computers or with two or more kinds of operating systems.
- adj. Obsolete Bearable; endurable.
- n. Something, such as a light or small typewriter, that can be carried or moved with ease.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Capable of being carried in the hand or about the person; capable of being carried or transported from place to place; easily carried or conveyed.
- Supportable; tolerable.
- Capable of carrying or transporting.
- Accessible (?).
Wiktionary
- adj. Able to be carried or easily moved.
- adj. Of software, able to be run on multiple hardware or operating systems.
- n. A portable toilet; a self-contained outhouse.
- n. Any temporary building that is portable, especially one located at a school.
- n. A hand-held video gaming device.
- n. a portable computer
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Capable of being borne or carried; easily transported; conveyed without difficulty.
- adj. Possible to be endured; supportable.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of a motor designed to be attached to the outside of a boat's hull
- n. a small light typewriter; usually with a case in which it can be carried
- adj. easily or conveniently transported
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin portābilis, from Latin portāre, to carry; see per-2 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“CINCINNATI -- Blue Ash police have arrested a man after finding what they call a portable meth lab.”
“I'm not completely anti-PortableApps (I have Firefox, WinMerge, and OO. o from them), but the fact that a very large proportion of their apps were already portable is a big pet peeve of mine.”
Lifehacker Pack 2009: Essential Free Windows Downloads | Lifehacker Australia
“Wow I tend to find that the only people who are interested in portable software are geeks and thus have no need for me to give them anything.”
Turn Thumb Drives Into Feature-Packed Giveaway Drives | Lifehacker Australia
“On the tarmac nearby, relief workers from Mexico slept under the stars, their sniffer dogs lolling in portable kennels.”
“I came across thousands of people queued up, some sitting in portable chairs, some carrying food from the commissary, some drifting to sleep.”
The Huffington Post: A Visit To A Loan Modification Marathon
“When the new handheld system went on sale last year, Sony hailed it as a step forward in portable gaming.”
“As I've read Finn's book, I am amazed at how well it explains my experiences as a bilingual educator who often found himself in portable buildings with his class.”
“Mirasol will also compete with organic light-emitting displays (OLEDS) and possibly e-ink technology used in portable readers.”
“Assuming Moore's law improvements in portable book readers, a more likely scenario is that you can get a copy of any book ever published from Amazon. com, at a lower price for one chapter.”
Cost of Digital Storage, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘portable’.
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Topical
The buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 775 more...
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The Buzz
The bang, the cannonade,
the bale, the hum.lab situation, media, startup, scientific, gameplay, social, intuitive, creative, collaborative, funding, non-governmental ..., consultant and 123 more...
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Siamese-Twin Words
Idea from Will Shortz's NPR puzzle feature. Two words that share a common letter (end of first word and start of second word) and forming a larger word, e.g., mill and lion = mil-l-ion. Variants ...
cordial, portable, trillion, retort, preposition, palace, domesticity, passage, shallow, electorate, bootstrap, turkey and 9 more...
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Desks
A list of desk types, notable and historic desks, and words and phrases pertaining to this useful item of furniture.
Bureau du Roi, the Resolute desk, Henry VIII's writ..., campaign, student, computer, field, games table, school, portable, writing desk, writing table and 50 more...
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