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''arable'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''arable'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260227140228-00-⌔

arable - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

arable (comparative more arable, superlative most arable)

  • (agriculture, of land) Able to be plowed or tilled, capable of growing crops (traditionally contrasted with pasturable lands such as heaths).
    • ✤ And again, since no animal now stole, it was unnecessary to fence off pasture from arable land […]1
  • (agriculture, NGO jargon, of land) Under cultivation (within any quinquennial period) for the production of crops sown and harvested within the same agricultural year (contrasted with permanently-cropped lands such as orchards).

Noun

arable (usually uncountable, plural arables)

  • Land that can be cropped (i.e., land that is arable); land that is being cropped (i.e., land that is in the cropping phase of a crop rotation, currently being cropped rather than used as pasture or fallow).
    • ✤ Arrangements for the drainage of this piece of arable were commenced last summer2

Etymology

From Middle English arable, from Middle French arable, from Old French arable, from Latin arābilis, formed from arō (“plow”) + -bilis (“able to be”). Cognate with earable (“arable”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈæɹəbl̩/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC, page 50: ↩

  2. 1932, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter XXII, in Have His Carcase: ↩

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Secondary

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