bearable

UK/ˈbɛəɹəbəɫ/US/ˈbɛəɹəbəɫ/

adjectiveB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,649 of 15,258leans spoken

Bearable means just about possible to put up with. Barely bearable, made it bearable, not bearable.

It sets a low bar and says so: calling something bearable admits it is unpleasant. It is used of pain, weather, company and waiting. Note unbearable, which is much commoner and much stronger; and that bearable comes from bear in the sense of carry, so what is bearable is what can be carried.

Definitions of bearable

1adjectivebearableJust about possible to put up with.B2
“The pain was bearable as long as I kept still.”
synonyms: tolerable, endurable

bearable is a quality of tolerability.

Where it comes from

Middle English berable is bear plus -able, from Old English beran, to carry. Bier, burden and birth come from the same carrying.

Middle English
berable
English, today
bearable

From Middle English berable, equivalent to bear + able.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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bearable in the wild

A cooling vest is a piece of specially made clothing designed to lower or stabilize body temperature and make exposure to warm climates or environments more bearable.
Cooling vest
How bearable the noise is depends on which district of Saint-Victoret you are in (some districts lie directly beneath the flight path to the landing strip).
Saint-Victoret
The route rates as extremely demanding, but is made bearable by spectacular mountain scenery.
4 Peaks Mountain Challenge
Consolation may render loss more bearable by inviting some shift in belief about the point of living a life that includes suffering.
Consolation

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.

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