Affectable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Capable of being influenced, moved, or changed in emotion or condition by external forces or circumstances
2. Susceptible to external influences or alterations in feelings or states that might provoke a response or change in condition
3. Able to experience changes in emotion or state due to outside factors or interventions that might incite an effect

Etymology: "Affectable" is a plain formation: the verb "affect" combined with the suffix "-able", meaning "capable of being affected." The suffix comes from Latin "-abilis," which turned verbs into adjectives describing what could be done to or by something, and English attached it to many verbs over the centuries, so "affectable" follows a pattern that produced words like "readable" and "breakable." The verb underneath has its own twist. "Affect" comes from Latin "afficere," meaning "to act upon or influence," built from "ad-" ("to") and "facere" ("to make or do"), so its original sense was something like "to do something to." That physical idea of acting on something is still present in the adjective, which describes a thing or person that can be acted upon by outside forces, whether emotional or physical.

Synonyms: influencable, impressionable

Antonyms: unaffected, insensitive