Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Capable of being invented or contrived.
  • Capable of being bequeathed or assigned by will.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Capable of being devised, invented, or contrived.
  • adjective Capable of being bequeathed, or given by will.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective That can be devised or invented.
  • adjective Capable of being bequeathed, or given by will.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

devise +‎ -able

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Examples

  • UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They take the worst features of people, exaggerate them and reduce them to these devisable stereotypes which make it easier for us to make our minds up about.

    CNN Transcript Oct 31, 2008 2008

  • It surely seemed to me that I had reached that summit, that I had reached my limit, and that there was no higher lift devisable for me.

    Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

  • At least, that I had had a terrible nightmare about the ocean and refused on pain of any punishment devisable by man to go with you all.

    Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 2003

  • In unison the heads of the troops snapped in her direction, and for one astonishing minute she endured a march-past of the most comical and grotesque antics and expressions devisable by man.

    Captain Corelli's Mandolin De Bernieres, Louis 2003

  • At least, that I had had a terrible nightmare about the ocean and refused on pain of any punishment devisable by man to go with you all.

    Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 2003

  • Would to heaven that we had a sieve; that we could so much as fancy any kind of sieve, wind-fanners, or _ne plus ultra_ of machinery, devisable by man that would do it!

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843 Various

  • 'Every devisable means were unsuccessful in reducing the limb to its natural position.

    Diseases of the Horse's Foot Harry Caulton Reeks

  • But there was always Leam in the background with whom he had to reckon -- Leam, who wandered through the house in her straight-cut, plain black gown, made in the deepest fashion of mourning devisable, pale, silent, feverish, like an avenging spirit on his track; undoing what he had done if he had profaned an embodied memory of her mother, and as impervious to his anger as he was to her despair.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876 Various

  • The men were to have the sanest recreation devisable for their needs and interests -- out-of-door sports, movies, housing that would permit of dignified family life, recreation centres, good and proper food, alteration in the old order of "hire and fire," and general control over the men.

    An American Idyll The Life of Carleton H. Parker Cornelia Stratton Parker

  • The fundamental laws, considered as a whole, were the wisest devisable to suit the peculiar circumstances of the Colony; but whilst many of them were disregarded or treated as a dead letter, so many loopholes were invented by the dispensers of those in operation as to render the whole system a wearisome, dilatory process.

    The Philippine Islands John Foreman

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