a. and sb. [f. EAT v. + -ABLE.]
A. adj. That may be eaten, suitable for food; edible, esculent.
1483. Cath. Angl., 118. Eteabylle, comessibilis.
1551. Turner, Herbal, I. (1568), M v b. The eatable cucumbre pepon that is to saye rype, is of a fyne substance.
1579. Fulke, Heskins’ Parl., 306. The crosse maketh our Lordes fleshe layde vpon it eatable of men.
1690[?]. Consid. Raising Money, 15. To lay a Home-Excise upon things eatable and drinkable.
1756–7. trans. Keysler’s Trav. (1760), IV. 8. Bread mixed with sea-water … in time becomes so bitter as not to be eatable.
1863. Lyell, Antiq. Man, 13. The common eatable oyster.
B. sb. That which may be eaten; an article of food. Chiefly in pl.
1672. Petty, Pol. Anat., 362. More eatables were exported anno 1664, than 1641.
1719. De Foe, Crusoe (ed. 3), II. 46. Bread or other Eatables.
1726. Berkeley, in Fraser, Life, iv. (1871), 137. Whether a minor be not chargeable for eatables and wearables.
18[?]. Landor, Wks. (1868), II. 82. We had brought no eatable with us but fruit and thin marzopane.
1879. Beerbohm, Patagonia, xvi. 242. Till … all the drinkables and eatables in Pedro’s shop had disappeared.
Hence Eatableness; also Eatability, nonce-wd.
1795. Southey, Letters fr. Spain (1799), 113. P.’s theory of the eatability of cats.
1813. Ann. Reg. 1812 Chron. 518. Water-cresses, of the eatableness of which the Persians appeared totally ignorant.
