Scrutable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Capable of being examined, understood, or interpreted with reasonable effort
2. Possible to scrutinize and comprehend through careful study or investigation
3. Open to being looked into and made sense of without undue difficulty

Etymology: "Scrutable" is a plain English formation, built from "scrute," a verb meaning to examine closely, and the suffix "-able," which marks something that can be done. Something scrutable is something that can be scrutinised or understood by careful examination. The "scrute" element is itself a shortened form of "scrutinise," so the word carries the sense of close inspection inherited from Latin "scrutari," to search or examine. The pairing is worth noticing because "scrutable" often sits beside "inscrutable," which means the opposite. The "in-" prefix reverses the sense, so "inscrutable" describes what cannot be penetrated by examination, while "scrutable" describes what yields to it. The two words are thus a matched pair, with the negative form far more familiar in everyday English.

Synonyms: understandable, intelligible, comprehensible

Antonyms: inscrutable, mysterious, incomprehensible