[f. next: see -ITY. Cf. F. extensibilité.] The quality of being extensible; capability of being extended. a. Capacity of being stretched out to greater length or area.
a. 1640. J. Ball, Power Godl., II. v. (1657), 145. Water … is a … moist body, greater then the earth if we respect naturall extensibility.
1662. Boyle, Acc. Freezing, Wks. 1772, II. 706. A copper box … which did bear three several freezings, by reason of the great extensibility of that metal.
1701. Grew, Cosmol. Sacra, II. v. 54. In what precise manner they are Mixed together, so as to give a Fiber Extensibility … who can say?
1871. B. Stewart, Heat, § 173. An increase of temperature affects also the extensibility of bodies.
b. in immaterial sense.
1826. Blackw. Mag., XIX. 448. An extensibility of power, all but boundless.
1881. Whitney, Mixt. in Lang., 9. A pure scientific induction from the observed facts of mixed languages, dependent for its authority and its extensibility to further cases, on the one hand, upon the number and variety of the cases already observed.
