Experiencable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Able to be lived through, felt, or personally undergone by a person
2. Describing something that can be encountered directly and known through firsthand participation
3. Capable of being gone through or perceived by the senses or the mind

Etymology: "Experiencable" is a misspelling, and the source treats it as a variant of "experienceable," which is formed from "experience" plus the suffix "-able." The suffix has a long pedigree: it passed from Latin "-abilis," itself built on verb stems ending in "-are," into Old French "-able," and then into Middle English, where it was borrowed as a productive ending that could be attached to many verbs. Latin "-abilis" carried the sense of "capable of being" or "fit to be," so "experienceable" literally means "capable of being experienced." Because "experience" is the base, the word's real history is largely that of its suffix. The root of "-able" traces back to a Proto-Indo-European element, though its path through Proto-Italic and early Latin is ancient and far from the English word's own story. What matters for a reader is that English speakers could add "-able" to almost any verb they liked, so forms like "experienceable" arose as ordinary, transparent formations rather than as a single coinage with a traceable first user.