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tractable

UK/ˈtɹæk.tə.bəl/US/ˈtɹæk.tə.bəl/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,223 of 15,258leans written

Tractable means easy to manage or to deal with. A tractable problem.

In mathematics and computing it means a problem that can actually be solved in reasonable time. Of a person or an animal it means willing to be handled, and intractable is the commoner form.

Definitions of tractable

  1. 1adjectivetractableEasy to manage or to deal with.C2

    “The whole thing became tractable once it was written down.”

tractable is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin tractabilis comes from tractare, to handle, from trahere, to draw.

  1. Latin

    tractābilis — that may be touched, handled, or managed

  2. Middle English

    tractable

  3. English, today

    tractable

Built from

  • tractō · Latin — take in hand, handle, manage
  • trahō · Latin — draw

From Middle English tractable, tractabel, from Latin tractābilis (“that may be touched, handled, or managed”), from tractō (“take in hand, handle, manage”), frequentative of trahō (“draw”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

tractable in the wild

  • Cobham's thesis holds that P is the class of computational problems that are "efficiently solvable" or "tractable".

    P (complexity)

  • In modern terms, it identifies tractable problems with the complexity class P.

    Cobham's thesis

  • Jack Edmonds's 1965 paper "Paths, trees, and flowers" is also credited with identifying P with tractable problems.

    Cobham's thesis

  • Among infinite groups, linear groups form an interesting and tractable class.

    Linear group

  • Open loop models are more tractable, which is why they are sometimes preferred to closed-loop models even when the latter is a better description of reality.

    Open-loop model

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 trahō family

treatcontracttreatment

tractable — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,223 · point at the bar for the others