What does endurable mean?
Endurable is an adjective describing something — typically pain, hardship, heat, noise, or other unpleasant conditions — that can be tolerated or borne, even if it is unpleasant. It sits between comfort and crisis: an endurable situation is one a person can get through without breaking down or giving up. The word is relatively formal in register and appears frequently in writing about medicine, war, poverty, and extreme environments, where writers need to calibrate exactly how bad conditions are. It often carries an implicit sense of strain, and it commonly appears with limiting adverbs such as 'barely', 'hardly', or 'scarcely' to signal that tolerance is near its limit. Its antonyms include intolerable and unbearable. Derived from the Latin root durare, meaning 'to last' or 'to harden', it belongs to a family of words — endure, endurance, durable — all concerned with lasting through difficulty. It is a precise, useful alternative to vaguer terms like 'okay' or 'manageable'.
adjectiveAble to be endured or borne; tolerable, especially with reference to pain, hardship, or unpleasant conditions.
- (Of pain, suffering, hardship, or unpleasant conditions) able to be tolerated; not too severe or extreme to bear.
- (Formal) capable of being continued or lasted through without collapse or giving up.
"The summer heat was barely endurable without air conditioning."
"The pain from the surgery was endurable only with medication."
"Conditions in the refugee camp were harsh but just endurable during the mild season."
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of endurable
Endurable derives from the verb 'endure', which entered English from Old French endurer, ultimately from Latin indurare, meaning 'to make hard' or 'to harden against', formed from in- plus durare, 'to last or harden'. The adjective endurable arose in English in the late Middle English period, following the pattern of forming adjectives in -able from established verbs. It shares this Latin root durus ('hard') with cognates such as 'during', 'duration', and 'durable'.
Related word forms
How endurable is actually used
Endurable is a fairly formal word, most common in written English and in discussions of suffering, discomfort, or difficult circumstances. It often appears in the negative ('barely endurable', 'no longer endurable') to emphasise that a situation is approaching the limits of what can be tolerated.
Easily confused with endurable
'Durable' means long-lasting or resistant to wear (of objects and materials), while 'endurable' means able to be tolerated by a person.