a. [ad. late L. vindicābilis (Du Cange), f. L. vindicāre to vindicate. Cf. OF. vindicable punishing.]
† 1. Vengeful, vindictive. Obs.–1
1632. Lithgow, Trav., I. 7. Any obuious obiect of disastrous misfortune: or perhaps any vindicable action, [which] might from an vnsetled ranckour be conceiued.
2. Capable of being vindicated; admitting of being justified or maintained.
1647. Engl. Mountebank Cast. Sickly Water State, 5. Their freedoms, liberty of person, property of Estates given away and become meere Notions, and not vindicable, nor preservable by Law.
1713. Lond. Gaz., No. 5090/1. The most vindicable Quarrel can be imagin’d.
1736. Chandler, Hist. Persec., 436. I think this manner of subscribing to Creeds … is infamous in its nature, and vindicable upon no principles of conscience and honour.
1775. S. J. Pratt, Liberal Opinions, xlviii. (1783), II. 39. I think every work of God vindicable.
1836. J. Halley, in W. Arnot, Mem. (1842), 61. Feelings which were natural, but by no means vindicable.
1844. H. H. Wilson, Brit. India, II. 336. Hostilities in this campaign were generally prosecuted in a stern and inflexible spirit, vindicable, perhaps, by the cruelty and treachery of the Mahratta princes.
