The English Oracle

When to use 'divisible' vs 'dividable'

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Track title: CC C Schuberts Piano Sonata No 13 D

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Chapters
00:00 When To Use 'Divisible' Vs 'Dividable'
00:22 Accepted Answer Score 10
00:55 Answer 2 Score 9
01:07 Answer 3 Score 2
01:37 Thank you

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Full question
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Tags
#wordchoice #adjectives

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 10


In common usage there may be little or no difference in meaning; but in mathematical writing, divisible has an accepted usage not held by dividable. Oxford Dictionary gives “Mathematics (of a number) containing another number a number of times without a remainder: 24 is divisible by 4” as sense 2 of divisible. Sometimes redundant wording like evenly divisible is used, and I suppose evenly dividable could be used, but it isn't.

I don't know of a general rule. Incidentally, as seen via links in google books, dividable is a word respectable enough to use, in spite of suffering some disrespect, as in following: enter image description here




ANSWER 2

Score 9


Use dividable only if you want to appear strange... GoogleFight:

enter image description here




ANSWER 3

Score 2


Actually both are correct, the difference is the origin of the word. Divisible comes from the Latin root of certain words in English, it is the same word in French; while dividable comes from the Germanic root of English.

The same can be applied to various words in the English language, those that find their roots from Latin are generally employed by higher classes of English society such as scientific terms, while its Germanic counter-part are mostly used in its popular usage.