companionable
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adjective
[edit]companionable (comparative more companionable, superlative most companionable)
- Having the characteristics of a worthy companion; friendly and sociable.
- 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], Wuthering Heights: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC:
- She returned presently, bringing a smoking basin and a basket of work; and, having placed the former on the hob, drew in her seat, evidently pleased to find me so companionable.
- 1854, Henry David Thoreau, chapter V, in Walden[1], New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, published 1910, page 178:
- I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
- 1887, Benvenuto Cellini, chapter CXXI, in John Addington Symonds, transl., Autobiography[2], New York: P.F. Collier & Son, published 1910, page 240:
- All the disagreeable circumstances of my prison had become, as it were, to me friendly and companionable; not one of them gave me annoyance.
- 1908, G. K. Chesterton, chapter IX, in The Man Who Was Thursday[3], New York: Dodd, Mead & Co, published 1910, page 154:
- Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, and a companionable silence fell between the three men.
- 1914, James Stephens, The Demi-Gods[4], New York: Macmillan, published 1921, Book II, pp. 126-7:
- They are a companionable food; they make a pleasant, crunching noise when they are bitten, and so, when one is eating carrots, one can listen to the sound of one's eating and make a story from it.
- 1992, Toni Morrison, Jazz, New York: Vintage, published 2004, page 100:
- Bottles of rye, purgative waters and eaux for every conceivable toilette made a companionable click in his worn carpet bag.
- 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, pages 35–36:
- The up and down lines ran next to each other in vault-like tunnels, whereas the Tube trains would occupy their own tunnels. That's why the cut-and-cover lines are more human than the Tubes. They are more companionable. You can see people going the other way - your perspective is broadened.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]being worthy of companionship
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