Capable means you have what the job needs. A capable pair of hands on the night ward, a capable little car that will get you over the mountain, a deputy capable of running the department on her own for a month.
The pattern is capable OF, and OF takes a noun or an -ing form: capable of great kindness, capable of finishing on time. Never capable to do. Standing in front of a noun, capable is quiet praise — a capable student, a capable engineer — solid rather than dazzling. It also swings the other way, and darkly: capable of murder, capable of lying to your face, meaning the person has it in them. The opposite is incapable. Able is the everyday twin, but it prefers a different frame: she is able to swim, she is capable of swimming.
1adjectivecapableHaving the skill, power or qualities needed to do something.~96%
“She is perfectly capable of fixing the tap herself.”
synonyms: able, competent
2adjectivecompetentGood at the job; effective without fuss.~2%
“The ward was left in the capable hands of the night nurse.”
3adjectivebadHaving it in you to do something, especially something bad.~2%
“He is capable of walking out without saying goodbye.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: able, competent
Capable came in from Middle French capable, which had it from Latin capābilis. Under the Latin sits the Proto-Indo-European root *kap-, the root beneath a whole crowd of words about taking hold of things — which is a fair picture of what a capable person does with a task.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
capābilis
Middle French
capable
English, today
capable
Borrowed from Middle French capable, from Latin capābilis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA