advisable

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,129 of 15,258neutralformal · an editor’s judgement

Advisable means sensible and worth doing. Not compulsory — just clearly the better idea.

The word is impersonal by design, and it nearly always appears as it is advisable to, which recommends something without anybody taking responsibility for the advice. Guidance notes, insurance documents and travel warnings are full of it. It is a shade weaker than necessary and a shade stronger than a suggestion. The opposite, inadvisable, is the polite way of telling somebody their plan is a bad one.

Definitions of advisable

1adjectiveadvisableSensible and worth doing.B2+
“It is advisable to book well in advance.”

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*weyd-
Middle English
avisen
English
advise
English, today
advisable

From advise + -able. advise comes from Middle English avisen. From Middle English avisen (“to perceive, consider, inform”), from Old French aviser, from avis, or from Latin advisō, from ad + visō. See also advice.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Word Building

First appears in chapter 13 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

advisable in the wild

Using penetrating fluids as general-purpose lubricants is not advisable, because such oils are relatively volatile.
Penetrating oil
Most of these kinds of terms lack a universally consistent definition, so caution and clarification are often advisable.
Combination therapy
Every workshop has a different climate, and it is advisable to check from time to time that a pair of sticks are still true.
Winding stick
Walker found it "advisable to consider the new genus incertae sedis until further evidence of affinity is forthcoming." In 2007, Darren Naish and David M.
Wyleyia
The term can also be used to refer to a taste for foods that are considered to be advisable to avoid, especially for health reasons.
Guilty pleasure

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

← Vocabulary