[f. next: see -ITY.] = TENABLENESS.
1796. W. Gilbert, The Hurricane, Pref. v. For when the Creator made every thing VERY GOOD, he also made it tenable, on the one hand; and on the other complete; consequently without the necessity, without the desire, of encroaching, and also without the capability, except under the penalty of surrendering with its own complete roundness, its own tenability.
1845. S. Wilberforce, in Ashwell, Life (1879), I. viii. 303. Only to maintain in the abstract, the tenability of a certain position.
1865. Masson, Rec. Brit. Philos., 201. When one looked again at his own position … one could not see its superior tenability in the new conditions of the campaign.
1875. Ruskin, Fors Clav., li. 67, note. Discussing the relative tenability of insects between the fingers.
