tractable — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed.

   Usage

   • of people

   Synonyms

   docilemanageablegovernable

   Examples

   "Tess is queer." "But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."

   But once in London Jane Porter was no more tractable than she had been in Baltimore. She found one excuse after another, […]

2. Easy to deal with or manage.

   Usage

   • of a problem

   Examples

   I have always found horses, an animal I am attached to, very tractable when treated with humanity and steadiness.

   Of all the tractable, equal-tempered, attached, and faithful beings that ever lived, I believe he was the most so.

   More examples (2)

   [T]his matter of the vanishing bridge must have been arranged in order to put him in a properly subdued and tractable frame of mind.

   Some masters can be quite kind if you're meek and tractable.

3. Capable of being shaped; malleable.

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   I need not point out the advantages of modelling in a material as durable as stone. . . . Mixed up with just enough water to form a stiff paste, it accommodates itself to the touch of the modelling tool. . . . There are two inherent difficulties in using it—one, it is not so tractable as clay. . . .

4. Capable of being handled or touched.

   Usage

   • Obsolete

   Synonyms

   palpablepracticablefeasibleserviceable

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   At leaſt five Hundred of theſe reforming Vultures are daily plundering our Pockets, and ranſacking our Houſes, leaving me ſometimes not one pair of Tractable Buttocks in my Vaulting-School to provide for my Family, or earn me ſo much as a Pudding for my next Sundays Dinner : [...]

5. Sufficiently operationalizable or useful to allow a mathematical calculation to proceed toward a solution.

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   This assumption is in the Raiffa and Schlaifer (1961, p. 72) spirit of using ‘a little ingenuity. . . to find a tractable function’ to quantify risk-preferences and probability judgments so as to make the analysis feasible.

6. Algorithmically solvable fast enough to be practically relevant, typically in polynomial time.

   Usage

   • of a decision problem

Adjective

1. easily managed (controlled or taught or molded)

   Synonyms

   manipulable

   Antonyms

   intractable

   Examples

   tractable young minds

2. responsive to suggestions and influences

   Synonyms

   amenable

   Examples

   a tractable student

   an amenable child