describable

Describable is an adjective meaning capable of being described; able to be expressed in words or other forms of description. It is used to indicate that a property, phenomenon, or object can be communicated through language within a given descriptive framework. The word is formed from the verb describe plus the suffix -able, and ultimately derives from Latin describere via English.

In linguistics and philosophy, describability is a matter of definability and communicability: if a feature can be captured by a description in a language or theory, it is describable; if not, it may be characterized as indescribable or only approximately describable. In cognitive science and artificial intelligence, describable features refer to aspects of a percept or object that can be reliably captured by a description or label.

Examples: The color orange is describable by wavelength and common-language description, such as "a color between red and yellow." A straightforward physical property like mass is easily describable in quantitative terms. Some subjective experiences, by contrast, are argued to be less fully describable in objective terms.

See also: describability, definable, description, expressible, indescribable.