Supportableness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality of being able to be sustained, backed up, or upheld by evidence, argument, or practical means
2. The condition of being capable of bearing a load, withstanding challenge, or being defended with reasons
3. How far something can be maintained, endorsed, or justified, especially through argument or resources

Etymology: "Supportableness" is a plain English compound: the adjective "supportable" with the suffix "-ness" attached to turn a quality into a noun. "Supportable" itself comes from "support" plus the adjective-forming "-able," so the word is essentially two layers of familiar English building blocks stacked together. The suffix has a longer ancestry than the word it sits on. "-ness" descends from Old English "-nes(s)," a noun-forming ending that traces back through Proto-Germanic to very ancient roots, and it has been attached to native and borrowed adjectives throughout the history of English. That is why it can be fastened onto almost any adjective to name the state or quality it describes, and why "supportableness" needs no special history of its own: it was built on demand, one piece at a time, whenever someone needed to talk about how bearable or defensible something was.

Synonyms: tenability, defensibility, sustainability

Antonyms: indefensibility, untenability