growable

Growable is an adjective describing the capacity for growth or the design to grow. It is used across domains to denote systems, organisms, or structures that can increase in size, capacity, or yield without a fundamental redesign.

In biology and agriculture, growable organisms or crops are those that can be cultivated and propagated to increase biomass or harvest yield, including plants bred for vigorous or prolific growth. The term underscores the potential for expansion in size or reproductive output, often in contexts of cultivation, farming, or horticulture.

In computing, growable data structures refer to containers that can expand their storage capacity at runtime. A common example is the dynamic array, sometimes called a growable array, which resizes by allocating a larger underlying storage and copying existing elements when needed. This approach yields amortized constant-time appends despite occasional resizing operations. Similar concepts appear in scalable software architectures where resources can be added on demand.

In software design and hardware provisioning, growable or scalable systems are those that can accommodate increasing workload or data by adding components or capacity, such as additional storage, processing power, or modular hardware. This flexibility supports long-term growth without complete reengineering.

Etymology: from grow + able, formed in the sense of “able to grow.” The term is commonly used descriptively rather than as a formal technical standard.