answerable
Americanadjective
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liable to be asked to give account; responsible.
He is answerable to a committee for all his decisions.
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capable of being answered.
a question answerable by mail.
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proportionate; correlative (usually followed byto ).
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corresponding; suitable (usually followed byto ).
The amount is not answerable to my needs.
adjective
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(postpositive; foll by for or to) responsible or accountable
answerable for someone's safety
answerable to one's boss
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able to be answered
Other Word Forms
- answerability noun
- answerableness noun
- answerably adverb
Etymology
Origin of answerable
Explanation
If a question is answerable, you have a response to it. But if a person is answerable, she is responsible for something, the way a team captain is answerable for the behavior of the team as a whole. Sometimes you'll hear a question described as being answerable or unanswerable. "What's the meaning of life?" is unanswerable, while "What did you have for breakfast?" is answerable. But if you are answerable for something (or someone), it means you're accountable. So you might say that a country's president is answerable for the actions of that country's military, or that your neighbor is answerable for the damage his dog did to the plastic flamingo lawn ornaments in your yard.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“I don’t think the market is going to get the clarity it wants, because it’s not an easily answerable question and it’s not one that can be answered in the near term,” he said.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026
They had put their lives on the line to create a democratic republic, answerable to the people and not a king.
From Salon • Nov. 5, 2025
From Aden to Kuwait, a crescent of Arabian protectorates was governed from Delhi, overseen by the Indian Political Service, policed by Indian troops, and answerable to the Viceroy of India.
From BBC • Jun. 21, 2025
But all of this avoids the challenges of a magical realism where questions about the purpose of poetry, theater, political resistance, life and legacy are answerable only by dying.
From Los Angeles Times • May 9, 2025
Of course, we were all answerable to Erma.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
