Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Being such that attack, seizure, or capture is possible; vulnerable or assailable: a pregnable fortress.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Capable of being taken or won by force; expugnable.
- Capable of being moved, impressed, or convinced.
Wiktionary
- adj. vulnerable to attack
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. rare Capable of being entered, taken, or captured; expugnable.
Etymologies
- Middle English preignable, pregnabul, from Old French prenable, pregnauble, from prendre, to grasp, from Latin prehendere, prēndere; see ghend- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Only after Tunisia's longtime president fled his North African country last month did Mr. Mubarak's grip on power seem pregnable.”
The Wall Street Journal: A Man Needed Abroad, Reviled at Home
“Got estrogen young and pregnable - young cute face.”
“There comes therefore the Statesman who acknowledges to himself that he will be pregnable.”
“Not im-pregnable, but as close to it as Necromonger technol-ogy could make it.”
“But though she recognized an egotist in the settee, she felt none of that usual shutting of doors in her mind which meant clearing ship for action; on the contrary her instinct told her that this man was somehow completely pregnable and quite defenseless.”
“American, German, and Turkish forces descended on "im - pregnable" Rostov from land, sea, and air, destroyed a crack Guards Army in days.”
“Mathematical Demonstrations being built upon the im - pregnable Foundation of Geometry and Arithmetick are the only Truths that can sink into the mind of Man void of all Uncertainty; and all other Discourses participate more or less of Truth according as their subjects are more or less capable of Mathematical Demonstration”
“He did not, he simply could not believe that his base was as pregnable as the coordinator had assumed it to be.”
“It makes a breach in the blank wall, and the whole is now pregnable.”
“Let us assail this castle: it is pregnable: we shall have double honour.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pregnable’.
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Time for a new list!
abrupt, erupt, rupture, sync, appropinquity, heterochromia, homochromatic, monochromatic, willy nilly, nitty gritty, kowtow, wonton and 455 more...
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GRE Vocab
laconic, penchant, charlatan, inimical, exhort, avuncular, quandary, irascible, trestle, repudiate, subterfuge, rapine and 132 more...
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Portnoy's Complaint
Words gathered while reading Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.
bonditt, goy, kishkas, goyische, shkotzim, if-onlying, pishachs, schvartze, milchiks, flaishedigeh, galvanic, chazerai and 123 more...
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word set10
superstring, nonrepudiation, sandboxed, trojan horse, bandoliers, transmutation, antiauthoritarian, connubiality, flagelliform, appellative, camphoraceous, bollixed and 61 more...
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Words from the Collected Stories of F...
demimonde, grandiloquent, libertine, virtuous, vacuous, discord, mulatto, precocious, pregnable, languor, pickaninny, ineffable and 42 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pregnable.
qroqqa I liked his pregnable self, sensitive and porous, just before he talked, when he seemed a very soft animal, or a very sensual one, when his malady was not perceptible.
—Anaïs Nin, 'Marcel', in Delta of Venus
(Sadly we have been ruined by the Internet, and we all invariably think of Snape getting Harry up the duff. Nin did not mean that. What would Nin have done with Snape, I wonder?) Jul 14, 2008