a. Also 5 fixabull, -ibill, 8–9 fixible. [f. FIX v. + -ABLE.] Capable of being fixed: in various senses of the vb.
In quot. 1486 = FITCHÉ (Her.)
1486. Bk. St. Albans, Her. C Ij b. Hit is calde a cros patee fixible.
1648. W. Montagu, Miscellanea Spiritualia: or Devout Essaies, I. ix. § 2. 85. Since they cannot then stay what is transitory, let them attend to arrest that which is fixable, which is a good degree of peaceable acquiescence of spirit, in all transitory events.
1785. Phil. Trans., LXXV. 370. The stock K is to slide in a rebated … groove AD, and be fixable to any part thereof by the screw O.
1796. Hist., in Ann. Reg., XXXVIII. 49. The highest extent of wages to husbandmen was fixable by the magistrate, but not the lowest.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., 76. The chemical student is taught not to be startled at disquisitions on the heat in ice, or on latent and fixible light.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev. (1857), I. I. I. ii. 7. For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable!
b. Capable of being made non-volatile. † Fixable air: carbonic acid gas.
1766. Lee, in Phil. Trans., LVI. 100. The quick-lime, attracting fixable air, was reduced.
1794. Sullivan, View Nat., I. 267. The air in animals is mostly inflammable, but that in vegetables fixible.
1887. The Saturday Review, LXIII. 8 Jan., 65/1. The number of substances in the natural world which have a distinct, extractable, and fixable odour is so small, and their characteristics are so definite, that probably there has never been any very great difference in the popular perfumes of different ages.
