[f. TEACHABLE + -NESS.] The quality or state of being teachable.
1. Aptness or capacity for being taught; readiness to receive instruction, docility.
1571. Golding, Calvin on Ps. xxv. 9. This teachablenesse will nowhere bee founde, as long as the mynde [is] lifted up with pryde.
1651. Baxter, Inf. Bapt., 105. Not only Docible, but Exemplary, for their Teachableness.
1726. Swift, Gulliver, IV. iii. My teachableness, civility, and cleanliness, astonished him.
1863. Holland, Lett. Joneses, xii. 172. The prominent characteristic of all really great men is teachableness.
1897. Bp. Creighton, in Life & Lett. (1904), II. vii. 255. Humble submission and teachableness to a higher law.
† 2. Capacity of teaching; instructiveness. Obs.
1641. Milton, Animadv., v. Wks. 1851, III. 224. Wherefore wee should not attribute a right Method to the teachablenesse of Scripture, there can bee no reason given.
1695. Tryon, Dreams & Vis., iv. 57. There would be much teachableness in Dreams, as they are derived from, and demonstrate [etc.].
3. The quality of being communicable by instruction.
1871. Jowett, Plato, I. 109. Protagoras began by asserting … the teachableness of virtue.
