Meaning & use
gradeable
Last updated
Meanings
adjectivecomparable
Able to be marked or given a score, so that its quality can be judged.
Grammar: Used before a noun or after be: a gradeable essay, the essay is gradeable.
Patterns
- gradeable work
- be gradeable by someone
Only the final report is gradeable; the drafts are for feedback.
The teacher said handwritten answers were not gradeable if they were illegible.
Is this group project gradeable as individual work?
adjectivenot comparabletechnical
Describing a word, such as hot or tall, that can be used in degrees and modified by words like very.
Grammar: A linguistic label for adjectives: tall is gradeable, but pregnant is not.
Patterns
- a gradeable adjective
Tall is a gradeable adjective because you can say very tall.
Learners often mistake non-gradeable words like perfect for gradeable ones.
Linguists test whether an adjective is gradeable by adding very.
Common combinations
- gradeable adjective
- Cold is a gradeable adjective.
- gradeable work
- Late homework still counts as gradeable work.
- not gradeable
- The answers were messy and not gradeable.
- gradeable assignment
- Each gradeable assignment is worth ten percent.
Synonyms and how they differ
- gradable
- Gradable is the usual spelling in linguistics, while gradeable leans toward school marking.
- markable
- Markable is rare and means able to be marked, but it lacks the linguistic sense of degree.
- scorable
- Scorable focuses on getting a numeric score, often by a computer, rather than a teacher's grade.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: gradeable or gradable?
gradeable vs gradable
Gradable is a variant spelling meaning the same thing, so treat them as alternatives, not different words.
Practice
Which adjective is gradeable in the grammatical sense?
Choose one answer.
Happy can be used in degrees, as in very happy; unique, dead and pregnant are normally absolute and do not take very.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “gradeable”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.