Predictable means easy to know in advance. Entirely predictable, a predictable result, predictably late.
It is a compliment for systems and an insult for people: a predictable train service is what everybody wants and a predictable joke is not. Predictably as a sentence adverb is heavily ironic — predictably, nothing was ready. Note predictability; and that in psychology predictability is a large part of what makes something feel safe, which is why the word points two ways at once.
1adjectivepredictableEasy to know in advance.
“The film was so predictable that I guessed the ending after ten minutes.”
predictable is a quality of foreseeability.
Proto-Indo-European
*deyḱ-
Latin
praedicō — to mention beforehand
English
predict
English, today
predictable
Built from
From predict + -able. predict Early 17th century, from Latin praedicō (“to mention beforehand”) (perfect passive participle praedictus), from prae- (“before”) + dīcō (“to say”). Equivalent to Germanic forespeak, foretell, and foresay.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA