a. Also 7 verefiable. [f. VERIFY v. + -ABLE.] That can be verified or proved to be true, authentic, accurate or real; capable, admitting, or susceptible of verification.
Common in the 17th cent., and freq. from c. 1865.
1593. G. Harvey, Pierce’s Super., Wks. (Grosart), II. 116. I could peraduenture arread him his fortune in a fatall booke, as verifiable, as peremptorie.
1593. R. Harvey, Philad., 9. Why should not … Geffrey be as plaine and verifiable as Buchanan?
a. 1638. Mede, Wks. (1672), 789. It is commended for a modest, discreet, learned, regular, and of all in that list most verifiable, discovery.
1661. Glanvill, Van. Dogm., 199. If this notion be strictly verifiable.
1677. Cary, Chronol., II. i. I. iv. 102. That of the Foundation of the City … is verifiable by the like Authorities.
1843. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., I. II. V. i. § 4. A few only of the broadest laws verifiable by the reader’s immediate observation.
1846. Grote, Greece, II. xix. (1862), II. 76. Neither Homer nor Hesiod mentioned any verifiable present persons or circumstances.
1885. Clodd, Myths & Dr., II. xii. 227. The authority … will rest on the accredited, because verifiable, experience of man.
Hence Verifiableness, verifiability.
1881. A. Bruce, Chief End Revelation, i. 42. While the abstract possibility of a revelation is admitted, its verifiableness is in effect denied. Ibid. (1886), Mirac. Element Gospels, 294. They satisfy the modern requirements of verifiableness.
