feasible

Feasible means capable of being done, achieved, or carried out given existing rules, resources, and constraints. It implies not only theoretical possibility but practicality and viability within a specific context. The word originates in English via Old French faisable from Latin facere 'to do,' entering widely in 17th- and 18th-century usage. In everyday language, something is feasible if it can be accomplished with the available time, money, technology, and other constraints. In planning and decision-making, a feasibility study assesses whether a proposed project is technically workable, financially affordable, legally permissible, and schedule-compliant; the outcome is typically a recommendation to proceed, modify, or abandon the plan.

In mathematics and operations research, feasibility has a more precise sense. A feasible solution or point satisfies all problem constraints; the set of all such points is the feasible region. Feasibility does not guarantee optimality. A feasible region may be bounded or unbounded and can be used to focus search in optimization problems. Feasible also appears in engineering, science, and policy discussions to denote practicality of designs, methods, or policies. Related terms include feasible region, feasibility study, feasible solution, and the antonym infeasible. Synonyms include practicable, workable; antonyms infeasible, impossible.

For nuanced language, some contexts differentiate feasible from possible or probable, with feasible signaling practicality under real-world limits.