a. [f. prec. + -ABLE.]
1. That may be excepted against; open to objection. Now chiefly with negative words.
1691. Ray, Creation, I. (1714), 45. As the theory … is built wholly on a false supposition, so is it all along precarious and exceptionable.
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 279, ¶ 5. This Passage I look upon to be the most exceptionable in the whole Poem.
1775. De Lolme, Eng. Const., I. ix. 137, note. The depositions of such witnesses as are adjudged upon trial to be exceptionable, are set aside.
1837. J. D. Lang, New S. Wales, II. 35. The Female Factory at Paramatta has … been under most exceptionable management; insomuch as to have proved an absolute nuisance.
1870. R. Anderson, Missions Amer. Board, III. x. 157. The Greek priest led the way … chanting the funeral dirge, in which there was nothing exceptionable.
† b. of persons. Obs.
1754. Richardson, Grandison (1781), I. xxv. 175. Greville is surely (exceptionable as he is) a better man.
1813. Examiner, 7 Feb., 88/2. The ladies in that piece, though very exceptionable, are of a stamp far above his Angelica.
¶ 2. Occasionally misused for EXCEPTIONAL.
1801. W. Dupré, Fr. Dict., in F. Hall, Mod. Eng. (1873), 201. To add an exceptionable article to a law.
1854. H. Miller, Sch. & Schm. (1858), 381. A time … in which even fishes … were so rare and exceptionable, that they occupied a scarce appreciable place in Nature.
1874. Motley, Barneveld, II. xx. 356. The fact that he had not been stretched upon the rack during his trial [etc.] … were complacently mentioned a proofs of exceptionable indulgence.
quasi-sb. 1844. Tupper, Twins, xviii. How silly and harmful a thing is secresy (exceptionables excepted).
Hence Exceptionableness; Exceptionably adv.
1664. H. More, Myst. Iniq., 336. The groundlesness exceptionableness of his division of the duration of the world into seven Ages.
1820. Hazlitt, Lect. Dram. Lit., 179. I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is that which constitutes the chief merit of the play.
