[a. F. viable (1539), f. vie life: see -ABLE.] Capable of living; able to maintain a separate existence.
a. Of children at (normal or premature) birth.
1828–32. Webster, Viable, capable of living, as a new-born infant or premature child.
1859. Todd’s Cycl. Anat., V. 200/1. The delivery of a fœtus of viable or full-grown size.
1881. Trans. Obstet. Soc. Lond., XXII. 276. Such narrowing or deformity of the female pelvis … as will absolutely preclude the birth of a viable child.
b. In other physical applications.
1885. Goodale, Physiol. Bot. (1892), 446. Polyembryony [is] the production of two or more viable embryos in a seed.
c. 1890. Stevenson, In South Seas, I. iv. (1900), 26. To judge by the eye, there is no race more viable; and yet death reaps them with both hands.
c. fig. Of immaterial things or concepts.
1848. Tait’s Mag., XV. 702. The rest are waiting for the proper medium, the viable medium, the medium of harmony.
1883. G. P. Lathrop, Hawthorne’s Wks., XI. 435. What we have here is a romance in embryo; one, moreover, that never attained to a viable stature and constitution.
