a. Also useable. [a. OF. usable (1311), f. user: see USE v. and -ABLE. Cf. It. usabile, Pr. uzable.] That may or can be used; capable of use.
Somewhat rare a. 1800 (not in Johnson). Freq. from c. 1840.
1382. Wyclif, Exod. xxxix. 36. Thei offerden vp … the candelstik, lanterns, and the vsable thingis of it. Ibid., Ps. cxlviii. 10. Bestis, and alle vsable bestis.
c. 1449. Pecock, Repr., II. xviii. 259. Forwhi no vntrewe speche … is alloweable and vsable. Ibid. (c. 1454), Folewer, 26. Þe werk and office … not resonable to be excercible and vseable bi eny of þe wittis bifore seid.
1619. Time’s Storehouse, 756/1. If it be neither vse-able, nor beneficiall.
1666. J. Smith, Old Age, 82. How much service they [sc. the grinders] do to man while usable.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), II. 636. Every wood is usable for some good purpose.
1801. Monthly Mag., II. 289. There is a difference … between words used and words useable.
1832. Coleridge, Lett. (1895), 761. This tract is a very treasure, and never more usable as a medicine for our clergy.
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., I. 53. The books, or other useable or saleable articles.
1893. Cosmopolitan, XIV. 462/2. The synonym is shorter, more usable.
Hence Usability, Usableness.
1842. Blackw. Mag., LII. 730. It is not the utility, but the useability of a thing which is in question.
1872. H. W. Beecher, Pop. Lect. Preaching, iv. 110. I do not know anything that can compare in facility of usableness with phrenology.
1888. Standard, 26 Jan., 2/4. They had a right to half the ‘usability,’ if he might use the term, of the line.
