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adjective
Workable  adj.  Capable of being worked, or worth working; as, a workable mine; workable clay.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Workable" Quotes from Famous Books



... a distance of 2,000 miles, and found that through this extraordinary circuit they could transmit as many as four signals per second. They inferred that an Atlantic cable would offer but little more resistance, and would therefore be electrically workable and commercially lucrative. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... social deportment, family duties, cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and darkness; and, in short, to make human actions as harmonious as were all the forces ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... you could not lay your hand on any one item, and say: "Herein Phil Garron is extravagant or reckless." Nor could you point out any particular vice in his character; but he was "unsatisfactory" and as workable as putty. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... its wider, calmer views, and its patience, inclusiveness, and mild, genial acceptance of types that before did not come, and could not by any effort of will be brought, within range or made to adhere consistently with what was already accepted and workable. He was less the egotist now and more the realist. He was not so prone to the high lights in which all seems overwrought, exaggerated; concerned really with effects of a more subdued order, if still the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... free and effective voice in expressing the interests and needs of their people. I believe the effect of the reforms has been, is being, and will be, to draw the second class, who hope for colonial autonomy, into the ranks of the third class, who will be content with admission to a fair and workable co-operation. A correspondent wrote to me the other day ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... available information, however, as to how these theories can be reduced to actual practice. The Western Forestry and Conservation Association believes it can render no more practical service than by being the first to outline for public use definite workable methods of forest management applicable to ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... had a workable knowledge of the language, and he thanked his stars now that it was so. He smiled at her futile struggles to free ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... the Kindergarten can be done with tools. Care must be exercised, but children have quite a strong instinct for self-preservation, and if shown how real workmen handle their tools, they are often more careful than at a much later stage. To make a workable railway signal is more interesting and much more educative than to use one that came from a shop. The teacher may make illuminating discoveries in the process, as when one set of children desired to make a counter for a shop, and arranged their piece of ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... (pleaded the pipe) in the charter of that kingdom—in the sunshiny Sermon on the Mount. It is no fanciful conception of an intangible order of things, but a practical, workable code of daily life, adapted to any stage of civilisation, and delivered to men and women who, even according to the showing of hopeless pessimists, or strenuous advocates for Individualistic force and cunning, were in all respects like ourselves— delivered, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... legislation. But it has always been my submission to the House that that Constitution had about it no element of permanence, that it could not possibly have been maintained as an enduring, or even a workable settlement; and I am bound to say—I do not wish to be controversial this afternoon if I can avoid it—that, when I read the statement that this representative government stage would have been a convenient ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay the motives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities in those three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had been said ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... The practical result was that after a period of extreme tension between China and Japan which was expected to lead to war, that political genius, the late Prince Ito, managed to calm things down and arrange workable modus vivendi. Yuan Shih-kai, who had gone to Tientsin to report in person to Li Hung Chang, returned to Seoul triumphantly in October, 1885, as Imperial Resident. He was then twenty-eight years old; he had come to the front, no matter by what ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... cobwebs. It gave you a measure, a standard, whereby to compute earthly affairs. Another landmark passed; another milestone on the road to enlightenment. That period of doubt was over. His values had righted themselves. He had carved out new and sound ones; a workable, up-to-date theory of life. He was in fine trim. His liver—he forgot that he ever had one. Nepenthe had done him good all round. And he knew exactly what he wanted. A return to the Church, for example, was out of the question. His sympathies had ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... the marks of my strivings and my strugglings, of what I had learnt and unlearnt." {69c} He recognised the possibilities that lay in every man, only awaiting the hour when they should be called forth. He believed implicitly in the power of the will. {69d} He possessed ambition and a fine workable theory of how success was to be obtained; but he lacked initiative. He expected fortune to wait for him on the high-road, just as he knew adventures awaited him. He would not go "across the country," to use a phrase of the time common to postilions. He was too ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... us control, we would have lacked a workable equation when we set about putting the first moon rocket around those extraordinary engines of ours, which were still in the ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon

... the waste injured the labourer by depriving him, without adequate compensation, of such useful privileges as the right to graze a cow, a pig, geese or other small animals. It also discouraged him by tending to the extinction of small tenancies and freeholds that were no longer workable at a profit when common rights ceased to go with them. The industrious labourer could previously nourish a hope of bettering his condition by obtaining a small holding. Yet though the labourer suffered, impartial study does not show any intentional injustice. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... now that it has been clipped of all its youthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal—why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful vision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the will of the majority, why not? With the same political cunning and shrewdness the mass is petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praise is being sung in many keys: the poor majority, the outraged, the abused, the giant majority, if only it ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... averaged from eight to ten feet, whilst the latter varied from ten to fourteen feet in length; the blade in each case, however, consisting either of bone or stone, with a shaft of some light hard wood. Metals were, of course, perfectly unknown as workable materials. The war-spear was not hurled javelin-fashion like the hunting-spear, but propelled by means of a wommerah, which, in reality, was a kind of sling, perhaps twenty-four inches long, with a hook at one ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... Marwood's reply, "although before it can be sent to the jiggermen to be modeled it must pass through the pug-mill to be made more plastic and workable. It is here that it gets its final kneading, all the air bubbles in it being eliminated by a ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... the faithful carrying out of the principles of constitutional government is a departure from the American model, not an approximation to it, and, therefore, a departure from republicanism in its only workable shape." ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... Day for all trades, came at the end of a long and varied agitation, was at the moment in clear practical relation to labour movements all over the country, and had in fact gained greatly in significance and interest since it was first heard of in public, owing to events of current history. Workable proposals—a moderate tone—and the appearance, at any rate, of harmony and a united front among the representatives of labour—if so much at least could be attained to-night, both Wharton and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... would learn, yes. But, once a given theory proved workable, how resistant he would be to a new theory. How long—how incredibly long—it would take such a race to achieve the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... soil much meteoric iron, often in masses so large as to baffle all attempts at removal. Blocks of this kind have been known to furnish the natives in their vicinity for many years with sources of workable iron. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... have dealt with it have been classical scholars possessing little or no practical acquaintance with seafaring conditions, and none of their proposed arrangements of three banks of oars looks at all likely to be workable and effective. A practical test of the theory was made by Napoleon III when his "History of Julius Caesar" was being prepared. He had a trireme constructed and tried upon the Seine. There were three banks of oars, but though the fitting and arrangement ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... and expressed in the modest terms of probability, the theory has immense speculative interest and great ethical value. It is much to have the puzzle of the origin of evil thrown back for an indefinite number of cycles of lives and to have a workable explanation of Nemesis...." ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... thinks, and a compromise will probably best meet the case. Hence, against these two ways of accepting the universe, he maintains the pragmatic faith which is at once theistic, pluralistic, and melioristic. He accepts a personal power as a workable theory of the universe. But God need not be infinite or all-inclusive, for 'all that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our common selves.'[20] Such a conception of God, even on James's own admission, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... cynicism, real or affected, let us remember, that, though the taste ought to be refined, and daily refining, it ought not to be refined beyond being practically serviceable. Let things be good, but not too good to be workable. It is expedient that a cart for conveying coals should be of neat and decent appearance. Let the shafts be symmetrical, the boards well-planed, the whole strong, yet not clumsy; and over the whole let the painter's skill induce a hue rosy as beauty's cheek, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... violence but under the forms of law, government, and religion which represent the best wisdom of past generations. Of any proposal he always asked not only whether it embodied abstract principles of right but whether it was workable and expedient in the existing circumstances and among actual men. No phrase could better describe Burke's spirit and activity than that which Matthew Arnold coined of him—'the generous application of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... gambling, he began to need more, but being slow-witted he could think of no way better than robbing Mhtoon Pah, which suggestion the Chinaman's assistant looked upon as both dangerous and weak, regarded in the light of a workable plan. ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... tutor answered. "Scattered among the cranks and castle builders were several brilliant, solid-headed men. There was Moses G. Farmer, for example, one of the foremost electricians of that time, who had many an excellent and workable idea and who taught young Watson no end of valuable lessons. Then one day into the workshop came Alexander Graham Bell. In his hand he carried a mechanical contrivance Watson had previously made for him and on espying Tom in the distance he made a direct line for the workman's ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... a boy should have simple, workable rules for living. A boy ought to take a good soap bath at least twice a week and always after he has played a hard game or performed work of a nature that has caused ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... /vt./ (also 'cruft up') To throw together something ugly but temporarily workable. Like /vt./ {kluge up}, but more pejorative. "There isn't any program now to reverse all the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one together in about 10 minutes." See {hack together}, {hack up}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... appears to have paralleled in general the political and cultural revival, but, as in any mining region, the exhaustion of easily workable surface deposits marked a critical point, when the necessity of deeper mining led to the construction of supported tunnels and the introduction of machinery for removing ores and water from deep mines. On the basis of revisions of capital structure ...
— Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later • Robert P. Multhauf

... coercive systems are the only alternatives to the wage-system that have ever been found workable in the past history of the world. We will now consider the system which some of the most thoughtful socialists of to-day are proposing as a substitute for it in the hoped-for socialistic future. The school of English socialists, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... would say if land had always been communal property, and some one now proposed to hand it over absolutely to the dukes, the squires, the game-preservers, and the coal-owners. "'Tis impossible," they would exclaim; "the thing wouldn't be workable. Why, a single landlord might own half Westminster! A single landlord might own all Sutherlandshire! The hypothetical Duke of Westminster might put bars to the streets; he might impede locomotion; he might refuse to let certain people to whom he objected take ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... when he describes how, having finished the book and got into him all the gold of its fact, he added from himself that to the gold which made it workable—added to it his live soul, informed, transpierced it through and through with imagination; and then, standing on his balcony over the street, saw the whole story from the beginning shape itself out on ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... phase of naturalism is an attempt to state a pure and consistent experimentalism, a workable theory of the routine of sensations. But it commonly falls into the error of the vicious circle. The hypothetical cause of sensations is said to be matter. From this point of view the sensation is a complex, comprising elaborate ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... become a civilian of the first rank. He was industrious but improvident; he made money and he lost it. He had a habit of abandoning good inventions for worse ones. The ability to eliminate is good, but in sifting ideas let us cleave to those that are workable, until Fate proves there is something ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... of this disease, ventilation, as has been stated, is very much neglected in the pits now under consideration, where the various cases have occurred; and to that neglect I ascribe the prevalence of the malady. In those pits referred to, the workable apartments are so confined, and become after a time so destitute of oxygen, as, along with the smoke from lamps and gunpowder, to render the air unfit for healthy respiration. The only effectual remedy is a free admission of pure air, so applied as to remove the ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar

... and arrangement of the games have been made with the steadfast purpose of putting them into the most workable form, easily understood, with suggestions for getting the most sport and playing value out of them, and with means of ready reference to any class of games for use under any of the conditions mentioned. The series of indexes which accomplish this last-mentioned purpose make it possible ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... from embarking in the first available boat, and was only deterred by Fred's assurance that he had a plan in his head which was only workable by ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... lever controlled by an electro-magnet. It is easy to befog an issue by misstating facts, but the facts are here to speak for themselves, and that Morse temporarily abandoned his first idea, because he had not the means at his disposal to embody it in workable form and had recourse to another method for producing practically the same result, only shows wonderful ingenuity on his part. It can easily be seen that the waving line traced ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... up the ship from midnight till 6 a.m. on December 25, Christmas Day. Then they opened a little and we made progress till 11.30 a.m., when the leads closed again. We had encountered good leads and workable ice during the early part of the night, and the noon observation showed that our run for the twenty-four hours was the best since we entered the pack a fortnight earlier. We had made 71 miles S. 4 W. The ice held us up till the evening, and then we were able to follow some ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... he could have asked, showing that this venerable Indian trick was just as workable as in the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... peace and justice in the dealings of nations with one another. The brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair but empty phrase; it must be given a structure of force and reality. The nations must realize their common life and effect a workable partnership to secure that life against the aggressions ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... find it even harder to believe that a materialistic philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic discipline." ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett

... shall call on Wentworth and have a talk with him about it. Of course we may not be able to come to a workable arrangement. If not, it really does not matter very much. But if I can make satisfactory terms with them, I will help them to form ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... all. At first this ingenious device seemed to offer fair prospects of success. But ere long—for reasons which would lead us too far—the German hegemony broke down in Austria, and the whole balance was disturbed. It gradually became clear that the system was only workable when one scale was high in the air. The history of the past forty-seven years is the history of the gradual decay of the Dual System. Austria has progressed in many ways; her institutions have steadily ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... terrified creature circled round him and then the rope began to shorten to a more workable length. There was no haste, no flurry. Surely and steadily the rope shortened (but the horse went to the man not the man to the horse; that was to come later). With the shortening of the rope the compelling power ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... A workable scheme of attack has now been put into such shape as to let Stopford dovetail his Corps orders into it, and first thing sent him ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... interdependent form of civilization was about to be developed, and the telephone arrived in the nick of time to make this new civilization workable and convenient. It was the unfolding of a new organ. Just as the eye had become the telescope, and the hand had become machinery, and the feet had become railways, so the voice became the telephone. It was a new ideal method of communication ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... was prophetic of a more perfectly organized society. In the days of the kitty the fine Socialistic ideal of, "From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs," was made specific and workable. And the inspiring romantic tradition of Robin Hood was also carried over into modern life. The kitty robbed only the rich ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... is not popular among statesmen, that it has been denounced by an eminent authority as a "will-o'-the wisp", that arbitration has been styled a "Jack-o'-lantern", but this is not the first time a good and workable scheme has been branded with opprobrious names. The abolition of slavery was at one time considered to be an insane man's dream; now all people believe in it. Will the twentieth century witness the collapse ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... can promise you that Larry will make us no more trouble," he said. "Mr. Clavering has a workable scheme, and it will only need the Sheriff and a few men whom I will ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... an anomaly among the base metals under discussion, in that the primary form of this metal in most workable deposits is an oxide. Tin in this form is most difficult of solution from ground agencies, as witness the great alluvial deposits, often of considerable geologic age. In consequence the phenomena of migration and enrichment ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... training with such mechanisms. He turned back to his work, just as the warlocks began rallying behind Sather Karf, grabbing up what weapons they could find. There was no magic in this fight. Sticks, stones, hammers and knives were all that remained workable. ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... the President of the United States, the King of Denmark, and every other ruling Potentate in Europe. We therefore held that the only possible method by which the evils of extreme personal government could be averted, and by which the country could be provided with a workable legislative machine, was to include in the term "Egyptians" all the dwellers in Egypt, and to devise some plan by which the European and Egyptian elements of society would be fused together to such an extent at all events as to render them capable of cooperating in ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... business retorted, with cynical confidence. "If that's all you've got to say, my dear sir, it wouldn't be fair of me to make money terms with you. I won't discuss my price in the matter till I've some reason to believe this idea of yours is workable." ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... Grand Duke's death, the American admiral, Mackney, died at sea—you will remember? Now, following Ericksen, Van Rembold, undoubtedly the greatest mining engineer of the century and the only man who has ever produced radium in workable quantities, is seized with illness at a friend's house and expires even before medical aid can ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... the visitor's face and hair the crimson flush before mentioned circumnavigated the electrician's head once more, and his bump of self-esteem received a finishing blow. That any man supposed to possess two fairly good eyes and a workable brain could have mistaken her for an Orham Neck book agent by the name ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... is not mere theory, not something I read about or saw others do. These techniques are tested and workable. The next-to-last chapter of this book contains a complete plan of my 1992 garden with explanations and discussion of the ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... coast of the Greek mainland, cropping up again in many of the Aegean islands, and some of the ores, of which there is a great variety, are rare and valuable. The lack of transit facilities is partly remedied by the fact that workable veins often lie near enough to the sea for the produce to be carried straight from mine to ship, by an endless-chain system of overhead trolleys; so that, once capital is secured for installing the plant and opening the mine, profitable operations can be carried ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... to raise were so very remote from the truth that a slight distortion of figures was no use, and it was necessary to ignore the facts entirely. The resulting unveracity was fundamental. On a basis of so much falsehood it became impossible to erect any constructive financial policy which was workable. For this reason amongst others, a magnanimous financial policy was essential. The financial position of France and Italy was so bad that it was impossible to make them listen to reason on the subject of the German Indemnity, unless one could at the same time point out to them ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... of any kind, as in "plenty pidgin" or "no got pidgin," and pidgin English simply means a workable knowledge of colloquial English as picked up by tradesmen, servants and coolies, in contradistinction to English ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... the point of attack for all our teaching, this the particular point that is most sensitive to educational inoculation. If we find that the boy is eager to have a wireless outfit and is working with supreme intensity to crystallize his wish into tangible and workable form, quite heedless of clock hours, it were unkind to the point of cruelty and altogether unpedagogical to force him away from this congenial task into some other work that he will do only in a heartless ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... to which iron is thus capable of being applied, renders it of more use to mankind than all the other metals combined. Unlike iron, gold is found pure, and in an almost workable state; and at an early period in history, it seems to have been much more plentiful than iron or steel. But gold was unsuited for the purposes of tools, and would serve for neither a saw, a chisel, an axe, nor a ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... sincerely intended to be works of art, it is difficult to treat his art seriously. A step farther: one cannot accept as a work of dramatic art a piece that does not seek to cause an illusion, or any play which formally admits the existence of the audience. A workable distinction may be found in using the terms "drama" and "entertainment," ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... These several occupations kept them busy for an entire week, during which they saw no sign of human presence on the river; and by the time that all was finished the bows had dried into prime condition, and Dick found, to his amazement, that the wood which, when first cut, had been soft and workable as cheese, had become as hard as iron, tough, elastic, and extraordinarily strong; that it had, in short, become perfect for use as ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... Now this is a Workable Method. The teacher can apply it. Give every pupil a certain definite Search task. The teacher can adapt it to every age, and to every degree of Biblical knowledge. This series of text books will suggest plans of applying this basic method of Bible study in becoming acquainted ...
— A Bird's-Eye View of the Bible - Second Edition • Frank Nelson Palmer

... the canal, and trains of donkeys laden with marketing for the city by the sea, seemed stationary as we rushed by. The land appeared to be thoroughly cultivated. There were no fences or waste corners in sight. Every foot of workable ground was utilized ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... loose earth at the top of the mound and brought up a round, flattish flint about the size of a man's hand, that showed disk-shaped flakings arranged like the marking of a turtle-shell. "They were kept workable by being buried in the earth, and made into knives or razors or ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... a dividing of the workers into teams. For everything needs to be examined beforehand, and calculations must be made at the very start. And as soon as ever the ice shall have melted, and the rivers be flowing, and the land have dried sufficiently to be workable, the spade will begin its task in kitchen and flower garden, and the plough and the harrow their tasks in the field; until everywhere there will be tilling and sowing and planting. And do you understand what ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... ultimate end and aim of the instruction offered are practical workable results. Mr. Packard regards education as a tool. If the tool has no edge, is not adapted to its purpose, is not practically usable, it is worthless as a tool. This idea is kept prominent in all the work of the college, and its general results justify the position thus taken. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... "magnificent design," "mechanical," "unfelt," "ill-organised," "sensitive,"—is given, what such terms sometimes lack, a definite meaning. In a word, my hypothesis works; that is unusual: to some it has seemed not only workable but true; that ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... are usually made; but the original ordinance is one of the great pieces of American legislation, for it contained the fundamentals of the American land system which, with the modifications experience has introduced, has proved to be permanently workable and which has been envied and in several instances copied by other countries. Like almost all successful institutions of that sort, the Land Ordinance of 1785 was not an immediate creation but was a development out of former practices and customs and was in the nature of a compromise. Its essential ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... help speculating upon what might lie farther up the river and behind the second range. I had no money, but if I could only find workable country, I might stock it with borrowed capital, and consider myself a made man. True, the range looked so vast, that there seemed little chance of getting a sufficient road through it or over it; ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... without breaking its heart or shaking its nerve. It is the difficulty produced by the loose foundation or the vague scheme that breaks the heart—when a luckless fatuity has over-persuaded an author of the "saving" virtue of treatment. Being "treated" is never, in a workable idea, a mere passive condition, and I hold no subject ever susceptible of help that isn't, like the embarrassed man of our proverbial wisdom, first of all able to help itself. I was thus to have here an envious glimpse, in carrying my design through, of ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... Paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... one end, where they might imitate, with art, the unpremeditated. Above all, here, for the snatched instants, they could breathe so near to each other that the interval was almost engulfed in it, and the intensity both of the union and the caution became a workable substitute for contact. They had prolongations of instants that counted as visions of bliss; they had slow approximations that counted as long caresses. The quality of these passages, in truth, made the spoken word, and especially the spoken word about other people, fall ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... the necessary but complex secondary modifications, would render the constitution of a variety "unworkable" (p. 23). But this seems hardly feasible, seeing that natural selection must continually favour the most workable constitutions, and will only preserve organisms in proportion as they combine general workableness with the special modification. On the other hand, according to Mr. Spencer himself, use-inheritance must ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... eventually yielded because he believed his friend's interest would need looking after in his absence. After some discussion they agreed on a workable scheme, which was put down in writing and witnessed by the hotel-keeper. Then Jernyngham borrowed a saddle ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... was his in great degree in the years before the war. But now men who listen to him know that his perceptions are not merely logical—they are workable. His performances prove the worth ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... millions of dollars in gold in twenty years. Sixty-one million dollars was the largest annual gold yield ever made in Australia. California has several times produced ninety millions of gold in a year." (Townsend, p. 384.) "The area of workable coal beds in all the world outside the United States is estimated at 26,000 square miles. That of the United States, not including Alaska, is estimated at over 200,000 square miles, or eight times as large as the available coal area of all the rest of the globe!" ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... in best, though they will grow in any fairly good dry ground. The position should be open, but at the same time sheltered, as the blossoms are liable to be cut off by spring frosts. The planting may be done at any time during November and the beginning of March, when the ground is in a workable condition. Cherries are often worked upon the Mahaleb stock. As they have a tendency to gumming and canker, the knife should be used as little as possible, but where pruning is necessary, let it be done ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... first four letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Persian King Darius. And another twenty years had to go by until a British officer, Henry Rawlinson, who found the famous inscription of Behistun, gave us a workable key to ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... feeling, by wear and tear, violence, monotony. These limitations upon our access to that environment combine with the obscurity and complexity of the facts themselves to thwart clearness and justice of perception, to substitute misleading fictions for workable ideas, and to deprive us of adequate checks upon those who ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... A workable flying machine would be the grandest invention of the age. My offer may not bring it about, but suppose a shilling subscription was made throughout the civilised world; say twenty million people gave 1/- each. That ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... workable seams of coal, one of them, I think, twelve feet in thickness; the quality of the coal, though inferior to Welsh, was superior to Australian, and well reported on by the engineers of many steamers which had tried it; the vessels of the China squadron and ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... of any help to you," said Meldon, "you can count on me. I have a good deal of natural talent for ambuscades. Trot out the details of your scheme, and I'll be able to tell you in two words whether it's workable or not." ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... bit of it. It isn't crazy at all. On the contrary, it should be perfectly workable, and if it proved so, there would be a mine of ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... faculties for observation of the motives and actions of his fellows had been sheathed. Still, disuse had not altogether dulled them. Constant introspection had not destroyed his gift for speculation. It was rusted, but still workable. He had read aright Squire Jonas' stupefaction, the watchmaker's ludicrous alarm. He now read aright the chill which the very sight of his altered mien—cheerful and sprightly where they had expected ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... burning wood fire for guide to where the big miner was thawing the shaft in his claim, to make the frozen gravel workable, and in addition there were faint signs coming of the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... should have no social expression is to fly in the face of nature, and forbid causes to bring forth their normal effects. Wherever there is religion men will be associated, and their worship and their work will be carried on under forms of social organization. Anarchism is no more thinkable or workable in religion ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... and left it a science. In his special field of botany he was not, as some think, the first. He himself catalogued fully a thousand books on his topic. But he brought order into it; he took what was good and, rejecting the false, fashioned it into a workable system. In the mere matter of nomenclature, his way of calling plants, like men, by a family name and a given name wrought a change hard to appreciate in our day. The common blue grass of our lawns, for instance, he called, and we call it still, Poa pratensis. Up to his time it had three names ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... above description of the integraph may have made its construction and method of working sufficiently clear. Those of you who have a taste for mechanical work, and the necessary tools, might, I think, with some patience, construct a workable integraph. I expect the pivots would be the hardest part of the work. I hope, some day, myself to have another instrument made with a more readily changeable polar distance, with trace and guide points working in the same vertical, and a wheel permitting of inverse summation. If this project ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... that all those who have the cause of bibliography at heart will join to remedy the great evil. It would be quite possible to compile a really national work by a system of co-operation such as was found workable in the case of the Philological Society's Dictionary of the English Language. Sub-editors of the different letters might be appointed, and to them all titles could be sent. When the question of printing arose, it would be well to commence with the chief authors. These ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... lines, then let denudation take place along the line A H, so that the protruding masses indicated by the fainter lines are swept away— a miner, who has not discovered the faults, finding the mass a, which we will suppose to be a bed of coal four times repeated, might hope to find four beds, workable to an indefinite depth, but first, on arriving at the fault G, he is stopped suddenly in his workings, for he comes partly upon the shale b, and partly on the sandstone c; the same result awaits him at the fault F, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... difficulty in the paths of those who are attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... and being fouled by the sailing ships; the six-pounder methodically perforating the steamer from bow to stern; the steamer's 1-in. gun and the rifles from the sailing ships raking everything and everybody else; E12's coxswain on the conning-tower passing up ammunition; and E12's one workable motor developing "slight defects" at, of course, the moment when power to ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... Christian and Muslim lived together upon a fairly workable basis of toleration. Massacres of Christians and destruction of their churches occurred periodically, either in revenge for Christian successes elsewhere, or in connexion with other Mussulman disorders when mutual assassination was popular. But, on the whole, pilgrims, who at this ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... Basing his statements on the investigations of scientists, he showed that at the present rate of increase in production the available coal of the country would be exhausted in two hundred years and the workable iron ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... which he belonged, and of which's whereabouts (not having the volume of the army record at hand) he was in ignorance. In the intervals, also, he reflected on his past life to a sufficient extent to give the reader a more or less workable idea as to who and to what he was. His father, the old grey-haired Virginian aristocrat, he could see him still. "Take this sword, Eggleston," he had said, "use it for the State; never for anything else: don't cut string with it or open tin cans. Never sheathe it till ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... the statement that Mr. Woodrow Wilson is President of the United States, I no longer know where we are. Mr. Wells's "undying human memory and increasing human will" cannot exactly be identified with Public Opinion, but it belongs to the same order of ideas. Here there is an actual workable analogy. But there is no practicable analogy between a purely mental concept and a physical construction. You will not help me to believe in (say) the doctrine of Original Sin, by assuring me that it is built, like the Tower Bridge, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... threw his match aside, and walked to his machine. "I tell you, sir," he said, "there isn't a big Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't got at least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and manoeuvring to find out what the others have got. I tell you, sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an unaccredited native, can't get within four miles of Lydd nowadays—not to mention our little circus ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... essay comes from a neutral pen; it would else be discredited as a freak of prejudice. Pan-Germanism, as here seen, is the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that all is fair in war—and peace. It is no less than blank anarchy, philosophic and practical, and indefinitely less workable as a theory of international life than that of the so long discredited Sermon on the Mount. The honest Briton can find here solid justification of his cause. Perhaps it is not altogether unwholesome that our national withers don't entirely escape wringing. We are a little guilty, but much ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various

... man fly. It had so touched his imagination that the boy had scoured the papers and books in the public library ever since for something fresh to read on the subject of aviation. As a result Jimmy had quite a workable knowledge of what an aeroplane really was and the sort of work the flying men were called upon to do at ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... dangerous flare of the self-determination torch, national selfishness rushed to the front of the stage. Every pocket of people in Europe hemmed between a river, a mountain and a dialect claimed the rights of a nation, when more than half of them should have been conveniently merged into workable groups having some form of government with which ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... to supply ourselves with a systematic method of handling our estimates and expenditures and bringing them to the point where they will not be an unnecessary strain upon our income or necessitate unreasonable taxation; in other words, a workable budget system. And I respectfully suggest that two elements are essential to such a system-namely, not only that the proposal of appropriations should be in the hands of a single body, such as a single appropriations committee in each house of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... by neglecting to take into his confidence shipowners who were conversant with the voluntary system of training seamen. Had he done this, it is pretty certain they would have guided him clear of the difficulties he got into, and his measure would have been fashioned into a beneficent, workable scheme instead of ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... "A workable mock-up, cadet!" Strong was vaguely irritated by Roger's nonchalance in accepting a situation that Tom had marveled at. "You will take ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... from his carbine would bring his comrades across in time to join the others who were watching that trail. It had, as usual with Stimson's schemes, all been carefully thought out, and the plan was eminently workable, but unfortunately for the grizzled sergeant a better brain than his had foreseen ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... be treated in different ways: there may be private property in wagons, and public property in roads; private property in houses, and public property in forests; private property in automobiles, and public property in railway carriages. But any rule of property, like any other workable human law, must be applicable to all individuals that meet ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... men and women, together with its conceptions of the relations of the sexes and of man to man, can alone supply that foundation for all the elements of the new social order, intellectual and emotional, which will make it workable and permanent, and of which monogamy is but one element.[L] He does not see that representative government and popular rights cannot stand for any length of time ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... standard of height it is advisable to aim at. If you want to hunt your Harriers on foot, 16 inches is quite big enough—almost too big to run with; but if you are riding to them, 20 inches is a useful height, or even 19 inches. Either is a good workable size, and such hounds should be able to slip along fast enough for most people. Choose your hounds with plenty of bone, but not too clumsy or heavy; a round, firm neck, not too short, with a swan-like curve; a lean head with a long muzzle and fairly ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... Agricultural Economics, and, for the lack of such impartial information, the fundamental conflict between tillage and grazing goes on in the dark. We know where coal is to be found in Ireland; we do not know with any assurance where it is and where it is not profitably workable. The same is true of granite, marble, and indeed ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... supposed, General Hume had no opinion. He merely expressed himself as being prepared to accept any sound theory, or portions of such theories as might be advanced, and arrive at a workable conclusion therefrom. Which was exactly what we ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... not give fast colours. When this is noticed the use of the vat is stopped; it is heated to about 160 deg. F., and a little lime and hydrosulphite added, when all the oxidised indigo in the vat will speedily be reduced, and the vat put into a workable condition again. By use this vat tends to become alkaline, and consequently will spoil the wool, making it harsh and brittle. This is remedied by adding ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... 1874, he became president of the American Public Health Association. He was a physician to St. Joseph's Male Orphan Asylum and St. Ann's Infants' Asylum in Washington, D.C. In addition, he was instrumental in establishing Providence Hospital in the District of Columbia. He also provided a workable plan for the American Medical Association's library in Washington, D.C. (1868-1871). Among his several publications are: Contributions to the Annals of Medical Progress and Medical Education in the United States before and during the War of Independence (Washington: Government Printing ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh

... internal combustion engine proper further still. It will be interesting to recount the main points in the history of the development of the class of engine we shall deal with in the following pages, in order to show what huge strides were made soon after the correct and most workable theory had been formulated. ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman

... no explanations; but Prester Kleig knew. Maniel believed he could do it, but he needed two hours in which to perfect his theory and make it workable. Kleig knew that had he been able to do it in two years, or two decades, it still would have been in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various



Words linked to "Workable" :   feasible, practicable, work, possible, viable, executable



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