| 释义 |
thinkable, a. (n.)|ˈθɪŋkəb(ə)l|
[f. think v.2 + -able. Cf. unthinkable c 1430, etc.]
1. Capable of being thought; such as one can form a notion or idea of; cogitable. Also (rare) as n., a thing that can be thought of, a thinkable thing.
1854H. Spencer in Brit. Q. Rev. July 137 A corresponding progress in language, by which greater varieties of objects are thinkable and expressible. 1883H. Drummond Nat. Law in Spir. W. Introd. (1884) 3 To marshal the discrete materials..into thinkable form. 1890W. James Princ. Psychol. I. xiii. 529 As ‘thinkables’ or ‘existents’ even the smoke of a cigarette and the worth of a dollar-bill are comparable. 1907― Pragmatism iv. 140 Absolute generic unity would obtain if there were one summum genus under which all things without exception could be eventually subsumed. ‘Beings’, ‘thinkables’, ‘experiences’, would be candidates for this position.
2. That can be deemed real or actual; conceivable or imaginable as an existing fact.
1805Carlyle Fredk. Gt. xx. vi. (1872) IX. 109 How charming that you should make thinkable to us..what we were all inclined to think. 1908Times 10 Sept. 8/4 It is thinkable that considerate driving may render legal enactments unnecessary.
Hence ˈthinkableness; ˈthinkably adv., in thought, according to thought; conceivably.
1895A. J. Balfour Found. Belief 286 ‘Ultimate’ scientific ideas may be unthinkable without prejudice to the ‘thinkableness’ of ‘proximate’ scientific ideas. 1935Mind XLIV. 325 For finitists, ‘to exist’ means ‘to be thinkably constructible’. 1966Listener 9 June 840/3 Death is thinkably of two sorts—(i) the physical break⁓up of animate entities,..and (ii) our own projected death. |