legible

UK/ˈlɛd͡ʒəbl/US/ˈlɛd͡ʒəbl/

adjectiveB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,694 of 15,258neutral

Legible means clear enough to be read easily. Barely legible, a legible hand, keep it legible.

It is about the marks rather than the meaning, which is what separates it from readable: a legible sentence can still be nonsense, and a readable one can be badly written out. Prescriptions had to be made legible by law in several countries.

Definitions of legible

1adjectivelegibleClear enough to be read easily.B2+
“Please write clearly; your last essay was barely legible.”

legible is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin legibilis comes from legere, to read or gather. Lecture and legend are relatives.

Proto-Indo-European
*leǵ-
Latin
legibilis — that can be read
English, today
legible

From Latin legibilis (“that can be read”), from Latin legō.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Disability & Access

Practise this word

legible in the wild

Scientific testing from the 20th century onward has generally indicated that all caps text is less legible and readable than lower-case text.
All caps
At smaller sizes, darker colored text does not necessarily mean that text will be more legible.
Type color
Acceptable and legible levels of type color may differ between body text and headings or titles.
Type color
At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing clear, legible text.
Font hinting
While decapoint had the advantage of being legible to sighted people without training, it was much less practical and space efficient.
Decapoint

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

the legibilis family

legible illegible

legible — used about once every 15,236 pages · #12,694 · point at the bar for the others

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