News to me...

Just heard a CNN reporter announce that because of the weather, using public transit is 'recommendable.' Why, yes, it is recommendable, but is anyone actually recommending it?

Adjectives in "-able" usually seem to float around somewhere between the old, active "to be..." sense and the more modern, passive "capable of being..." one. Older words like damnable and advisable are very much at the active end, more modern ones like clubbable and microwaveable at the passive end. (But the potential for playing around with both meanings is always there, as in Reginald Hill's punning title A clubbable woman.)

I think recommendable is at the same end of the spectrum as advisable. John Locke, some 300 years ago, advises the reader to wash his children's feet constantly every day in cold water (by having them wear leaky shoes!): "It is recommendable for its cleanliness..."

There's also "commendable", which is more common, and is very much at the active end of the spectrum. A commendable action is one that should be commended, not one that potentially could be.

So the journalist is probably technically correct in using it, but being unnecessarily obscure. She could just as easily have said "it is recommended" (or advisable).

Recomendababble sounds more like it, PhaedraB. Public transit, is that like trains, busses, that kind of stuff?

ETA comma before Booksloth sees it's missing.. .. .. Bugrit!

Trainable could be miscomprehendable.

Is that the one with only three legs and a leaning towards being educationalistic, Pinko?

#5 I think that might be Jake the Peg or is he unmentionable these days?

Amazing how often, and it what circumstances, the triune prevails.