Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being acceptable or agreeable; acceptableness.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality of being acceptable; acceptableness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The quality of being acceptable; acceptableness.
  • noun military Operation plan review criterion. The determination as to whether the contemplated course of action is worth the cost in manpower, materiel, and time involved; is consistent with the law of war; and is militarily and politically supportable. (JP 1-02 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun satisfactoriness by virtue of conforming to approved standards

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

acceptable +‎ -ity

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Examples

  • We have seen so much death in the news, in movies and in games that it's hard to say where the line of acceptability is and what a director has to do to cross it.

    Jesse Kornbluth: 'The Killer Inside Me': Read The Book Before You See The Movie Jesse Kornbluth 2010

  • Such forward-looking investigations are sometimes called acceptability research because their purpose is to identify a basis for positioning an innovation so that it will be more acceptable that is, have a more rapid rate of adoption.

    Diffusion of Innovations Everett M. Rogers 1995

  • Neil Abercrombie, who knew Mr. Obama's parents when they were students in Honolulu, says that what the president finds here is not so much privacy but "acceptability" - the protective cocoon that comes with being in the warm embrace of a familiar place, where people regard him as "ohana," Hawaiian for "extended family."

    NYT > Home Page By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG 2010

  • Neil Abercrombie, who knew Mr. Obama's parents when they were students in Honolulu, says that what the president finds here is not so much privacy but "acceptability" - the protective cocoon that comes with being in the warm embrace of a familiar place, where people regard him as "ohana," Hawaiian for "extended family."

    NYT > Home Page By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG 2010

  • Re don’t we have to alert learners to the fact that their acceptability is still restricted to certain registers?

    C is for Conditional (the Third) « An A-Z of ELT 2010

  • That is, don’t we have to alert learners to the fact that their acceptability is still restricted to certain registers?

    C is for Conditional (the Third) « An A-Z of ELT 2010

  • We tell stories from our lives about appearance and acceptability, which is what middle school is all about.

    David Roche: Love Your New Face, Dear! 2009

  • From describing the Iraqi insurgency as being in its "last throes" (when it was patently just getting revved up for its second throes) to calling the acceptability of waterboarding a "no-brainer" (when even the people who conduct it say that the information it yields cannot be relied upon), he continues to defend the indefensible with the implausible and the discredited.

    Ellis Weiner: International Man of Mystery 2008

  • With the rise of doublespeak, or what is commonly known as "political correctness", we have already begun the journey of reshaping our language along those lines which fit an orthodoxy of "acceptability".

    Archive 2007-05-01 2007

  • Since I started in the business, I have seen the "acceptability" bar raised higher and higher.

    Sexism and Racism Steve Hulett 2007

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