Tenable means able to be defended or maintained. A tenable position, no longer tenable, a tenable argument.
It is used of arguments and of jobs — a position that cannot be defended in either sense is untenable, and that negative is far commoner than the positive. It began as a military term about holding ground. The French tenir means to hold.
1adjectivetenableAble to be defended or maintained.
“Once the new evidence came out, his theory was no longer tenable.”
tenable is a quality of defensibility.
French tenable comes from tenir, to hold, from Latin tenere. Tenant and tenure are relatives.
French
tenable
English, today
tenable
Built from
From the French tenable, from tenir (“to hold”); compare tenible.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA