a. [ad. (perh. through F. arable, 15th c. in Littré) L. arābilis, f. arā-re to plow. Preceded in use by a word erable (also in 16th c. errable, earable, aerable), referred to the cogn. Eng. vb. ere, EAR, of which arable was perh. at first intended as a correction after L. In 17th c. the two existed side by side (Coke uses both), but in the 18th earable became obs. exc. in dialects.] Capable of being plowed, fit for tillage; opposed to pasture- or wood-land.
1577. Tusser, Jan. Husb., lii. Land arable.
1628. Coke, On Litt., 53 b. If the tenant conuert arable land into wood. [Ibid., 85 b. Errable land.]
1725. Pope, Odyss., XX. 356. Unnumber’d acres arable and green.
1866. Rogers, Agric. & Prices, I. ii. 15. Half the arable estate, as a rule, lay in fallow.
b. absol. quasi-sb. Arable land.
1576. Lambarde, Peramb. Kent (1826), 3. Consisting indifferently of arable, pasture, meadow, and woodland.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., II. 321. Tis good for Arable, a Glebe that asks Tough Teams of Oxen.
1883. Hardy, in Longm. Mag., July, 258–9. Often a group of these honest fellows on the arable has the aspect of a body of tramps up to some mischief in the field, rather than its natural tillers at work there.
