Habitability

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The measure of how conducive an environment is for supporting living entities
2. The quality or condition of an environment that allows living organisms to survive and thrive
3. The capability of a place or environment to sustain life by providing necessary conditions

Etymology: Habitability is a plain compound built from two older parts: "habitable," meaning able to be lived in, and the suffix "-ity," which turns an adjective into a noun for a quality or state. The adjective itself comes from the Latin verb "habitare," to dwell, which is a frequentative of "habere," to have or hold. So a habitable place is one a person can hold as a home, and habitability is the quality of being such a place. The suffix does the real work here. It arrived in English by a long relay: Latin "-itas" passed through Old French "-ite" and then Middle English "-ite" before settling into the modern "-ity" that now attaches to countless adjectives. Habitability therefore has no single moment of invention; it is a noun assembled from parts that English already had.