Vomitable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Causing a strong feeling of nausea or the urge to vomit ; capable of being expelled from the stomach through vomiting
2. Inducing the sensation that leads to vomiting ; susceptible to being thrown up from the stomach
3. Provoking the reflex to vomit ; able to be actually vomited out

Etymology: "Vomitable" is about as plain as English word-building gets: it joins "vomit," which came into English from Latin "vomere" ("to throw up"), to the suffix "-able," meaning "capable of being" or "fit for." Put together, the word describes something capable of making a person vomit, which is exactly the sense it carries today. The suffix does most of the work here. English has long attached "-able" to verbs to make adjectives, so a word like "readable" means "able to be read," and "vomitable" follows the same pattern. Dictionaries record it as a straightforward formation rather than a borrowed term, so its meaning can be worked out from its two parts without any surprises.