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TOLERABLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
About average; acceptable
Example:
more than adequate as a secretary
Synonyms:
adequate; fair to middling; passable; tolerable
Classified under:
Similar:
satisfactory (giving satisfaction)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Capable of being borne or endured
Example:
the climate is at least tolerable
Classified under:
Similar:
bearable; endurable; sufferable; supportable (capable of being borne though unpleasant)
resistant; tolerant (able to tolerate environmental conditions or physiological stress)
Also:
allowable; permissible (that may be permitted especially as according to rule)
Antonym:
intolerable (incapable of being tolerated or endured)
Context examples:
My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Her grateful and gratified heart could hardly restrain its expressions within the language of tolerable calmness.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Words used to describe very unpleasant pain include 'miserable' and intolerable.' Remember, pain can have a low intensity, buy still feel extremely unpleasant, and some kinds of pain can have a high intensity but be very tolerable. With this scale, please tell us how unpleasant your pain feels.
(NPS - Tell Us Overall How Unpleasant Your Pain is to You, NCI Thesaurus)
Often as she had wished for and ordered it, she had never been able to get any thing tolerable.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Tolerable sport the first three days, but there has been no attempting anything since.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I could never see anything extraordinary in them.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Captain Harville was no reader; but he had contrived excellent accommodations, and fashioned very pretty shelves, for a tolerable collection of well-bound volumes, the property of Captain Benwick.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the chaise; Carter followed.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Of these I also made very tolerable stockings.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I explained with tolerable firmness, that I really did not know where my means of subsistence were to come from, unless I could earn them for myself.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
