wageable

English

Etymology

From wage +‎ -able.

Adjective

wageable (comparative more wageable, superlative most wageable)

1. Capable of being waged or fought.
   • 1946, Franklin Pierce Adams, Nods and Becks, page 194:

     Possibly the contest was open to all school children; but our guess is that it was wageable among only subscribers to the American Boy.

   • 1990, Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Richard H. Shultz, U.S. Defense Policy in an Era of Constrained Resources, page 312:

     The Soviets believe nuclear war is wageable and winnable, which is not to say they desire one or want to start one.

   • 2001, James F. Slevin, Introducing English, page 140:

     He thus participates in the general tendency of the time to numb critical attention to the problems in American society, to see the war as wageable only to the extent that it was an uncomplicated crusade.

   • 2010, Hermann Rebel, When Women Held the Dragon's Tongue:

     This book seeks grounds for a wageable debate in philosophical anthropology by exploring critical attitudes toward different historical anthropologies and the narratives they can release or, perforce, repress.

2. For which wages can be paid.
   • 1958, Archaeologia Aeliana:

     ...but this money was only lent, when he came to wageable ore he was paid for his ore at the current bargain price less the amount of lent money he had received.

   • 1978, Suzanne de Brunhoff, The State, Capital and Economic Policy, page 10:

     Insecurity of employment, which is a prerequisite of work discipline, contradicts capital's requirement for unlimited quantities of potentially wageable labour.

   • 2005, Ousseina Alidou, Engaging Modernity:

     However, this outcome was to be expected, given that Western capitalism is framed within a patriarchal ideology that did not incorporate women as "wageable" productive labor outside the household.