▪ I. countable, a.
(ˈkaʊntəb(ə)l)
Also 6 contabul, 6–7 comptable, 7 -ible, compteable.
[a. OF. contable, now comptable, f. conter, compter: see count v. Often aphetic for accountable.]
† 1. a. Liable to give an account or reckoning; answerable, responsible; = accountable 1. Obs.
| 1495 Act 11 Hen. VII, c. 10 § 1 Severally countable for the porcions by theym severally receyved. 1529 S. Fish Supplic. Beggers (1845) 2 The poore wyves must be countable to theym of every tenth eg. 1549 Latimer 3rd Serm. bef. Edw. VI (Arb.) 100 We are comptable to god, and so be they. 1603 Florio Montaigne iii. x. (1632) 571 An honest man is not comptable for the vice and folly of his trade. 1678 Norris Coll. Misc. (1699) 269 We are under an obligation..we are countable for them. 1828 Atherstone Fall of Nineveh xiii. 272 Who unto you has made us comptible? |
b. Involving responsibility; to be accounted for. Obs.
| 1549 Latimer 4th Serm. bef. Edw. VI (Arb.) 105 Is it not a dygnitye wyth a charge? is it not comptable?..It wylbe a chargeable dygnitye whan accompte shal be asked of it. |
c. Liable to answer to, sensitive to. Obs.
| 1601 Shakes. Twel. N. i. v. 186 Good Beauties, let mee sustaine no scorne; I am very comptible, euen to the least sinister vsage. |
2. a. Capable or proper to be counted or numbered; numerable.
| 1581 Lambarde Eiren. iv. iv. (1588) 452 If any person haue packed Fish in barrels, and haue mixed the countable Fish with the small Fish. 1596 Spenser State Irel. Wks. (1862) 503/2 The evils..are very many, and almost countable with those which were hidden in the basket of Pandora. 1611 Speed Hist. Gt. Brit. ix. vii. §64 Thirtie men of Armes, and other inferior Souldiers not countable. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. vii. i, They are countable by the thousand and the million. |
b. Within countable degrees of kinship. Cf. count v. 1 d. nonce-use.
| 1858 Carlyle Fredk. Gt. II. x. v. 631 A Prince of Orange countable kinsman to his Prussian Majesty. |
c. Math. = denumerable a.
| 1906 W. H. & G. C. Young Theory of Sets of Points iv. 35 Any set which can be brought into (1, 1)-correspondence with some or all of the natural numbers is said to be countable, and, if not a finite set, is said to be countably infinite. 1941 Birkhoff & MacLane Surv. Mod. Algebra xii. 338 Not all infinite classes are countable—there is more than one ‘infinite’ cardinal number. 1963 G. D. Mostov et al. Fund. Struct. Algebra ii. 42 Among the infinite sets are those which are said to be countable, or denumerable. [Note] The real numbers constitute an infinite set which is not countable. |
d. Of a noun: that can form a plural or be used with the indefinite article. Cf. next.
| [1914 Jespersen Mod. Eng. Gram. II. v. 121 Names of countable immaterial objects may be thus used as mass-names.] 1961 Brno Studies III. 27 The governing noun hat (which, naturally, is ‘countable’). 1968 J. Lyons Introd. Theoret. Ling. vii. 282 In all the languages referred to here certain words may be used either as ‘mass’ or ‘countable’ nouns. |
▪ II. ˈcountable, n.
[f. the adj.]
A noun that denotes a countable thing, characterized by its ability to form a plural or be used with the indefinite article.
| 1914 Jespersen Mod. Eng. Gram. II. v. 114 Such ‘countables’ are either material things like houses, horses, portraits, flowers, etc., or immaterial things of various orders, like days, miles; [etc.]. 1962 J. Söderlind in F. Behre Contrib. Eng. Syntax 102 Not a few of the uncountables so far discussed can function as countables as well. 1970 English Studies LI. 49 A noteworthy characteristic of the sequence no + noun + RC is that non-restrictive RC is only permissible with plural countables. |