Affectibility

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The ability to experience emotional or psychological influence from external sources is known as a specific capacity for change in feelings or thoughts based on interactions
2. The quality of being open to external emotional or mental influences that can alter one's feelings or mindset
3. A trait describing the susceptibility of a person or thing to changes in emotional or psychological state due to outside factors

Etymology: "Affectibility" is an alternative spelling of "affectability", and it is built in the most transparent way possible: the verb "affect" with the suffix "-ability" attached. That suffix, which comes from Latin "-abilis" through French, is the standard English way of turning a verb into a noun for "the quality of being able to be acted upon in a certain way," so the word means something like "capacity to be affected." The "-i-" in the spelling is a variant link vowel, and the two spellings are interchangeable. The verb "affect" itself comes from Latin "afficere," meaning "to act upon, influence, or work on," built from "ad-" ("toward") and "facere" ("to make or do"). The original sense is physical or active, as in something acting on something else, and the psychological sense of moving someone's feelings developed from that.