a. [f. LIVE v. + -ABLE.]
† 1. Likely to live. Obs. rare–0.
1611. in Cotgrave s.v. Viable.
† 2. Conducive to (comfortable) living. Obs.
1664. Pepys, Diary, 19 Feb. They are counted very rich people, worth at least 10 or 12,000l., and their country house all the yeare long, and all things liveable.
3. Of a house, a room or locality: That may be lived in; suitable for living in.
1814. Jane Austen, Mansf. Park, xxv. There will be work for five summers at least before the place is liveable.
1827. Scott, in Lockhart, Life, August, He [Scott] used to say that he did not know a more ‘liveable’ country [than the vale of Tweed].
1830. Campbell, in Lady Morgan’s Mem. (1862), II. 310. You will find me in a far more liveable part of London than I lived in before.
1849. Ld. Carlisle, Jrnl., 12 Feb., in Treyelyan, Life Macaulay (1889), 479. His rooms at the top of the Albany are very liveable.
1879. Miss Bird, Rocky Mountains, 202. [South Park] looked to me quite lowland and livable.
1895. Athenæum, 10 Aug., 195/3. If men had learnt the art of living in Africa, that continent would prove quite as ‘livable’ as Brazil.
4. Of life: That can be lived; bearable, supportable.
1841. Arnold, in Stanley, Life (1844), II. App. C. 436. But not the strongest Tory or Conservative values our Church or Law more than I do, or would find life less liveable without them.
1865. Whewell, in Life, 541. I cannot yet see how life is livable.
1896. Nation (N. Y.), LXII. 28/3. Who has for three years found life quite livable.
5. Of persons (also liveable with): That may be lived with; companionable, sociable.
1860. Chamb. Jrnl., XIV. 305. Many men and women are of irreproachable character in all the great essentials, yet are not liveable people.
1888. Athenæum, 21 April, 501/3. Few will leave so pleasant an impression [as Matthew Arnold], few will seem so livable-with as he.
1896. E. F. Benson, The Babe, B.A., i. 6–7. They were both … very live-able-with.
Hence Liveableness, quality of being ‘liveable’ (in quot. 1895, capability of living, ‘viability’).
1860. Chamb. Jrnl., XIV. 305. Everybody who has ever been a member of a household or a family, must have a ready conception of the quality—liveableness.
1882. Stevenson, Fam. Stud., 103. If the poet is to be of any help, he must testify to the liveableness of life.
1895. Athenæum, 27 July, 129/1. The articles … are very fair of their kind. But they have absolutely no independent livableness.
