distinguishable
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: [dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪ.ʃə.bl̩]
Forms: form: more distinguishable
form: most distinguishable
Etymology: From distinguish + -able.
Senses: examples: text: Black is very distinguishable against a white background
text: So much does creative wisdom [of Divine Providence] seem to delight in variety, that, tame only a nest of small birds—starlings or sparrows—and you will soon perceive that these birds will not only be distinguishable by bodily appearance, but also by individuality of temper. The same diversity of disposition pervades all creation, even the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, and is far more perceptible in the human species, where the variations are endless and minute, between the two extremes of greatest and least ability and aptitude. Education will always do a great deal; yet where, by infinite labour, you can excite and impress the dull faculties of one brother or sister till they have got versed by rote in any lesson of art or science, another will catch up the idea at once with such aptitude as might make you suppose it intuitive in his or her constitution.
ref: 1881, John Younger, “Introductory Chapter”, in Autobiography of John Younger, Shoemaker, St. Boswells, Kelso, Scotland: J. & J.H. Rutherfurd, page xi:
text: From below came the sound of voices, quite distinguishable upon the still night air. Tarzan could not understand the words, but Abdul and the girl translated.
ref: 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 65:
text: First, Vodafone contended that the symbol within the circle is not an apostrophe but a “ballooned droplet,” and “is readily distinguishable from an apostrophe, both in the stylization of its curvature and its orientation . . . .”
ref: 2018 August 21, U.S. Copyright Office Review Board, “Second Request for Reconsideration for Refusal to Register Vodafone Speechmark”, in United States Copyright Office, page 2:
text: Since Francis Galton coined the phrase “nature versus nurture” 150 years ago, the debate about what makes us who we are has dominated the human sciences. Do genes determine our destiny, as the hereditarians would say? Or do we enter the world as blank slates, formed only by what we encounter in our homes and beyond? What started as an intellectual debate quickly expanded to whatever anyone wanted it to mean, invoked in arguments about everything from free will to race to inequality to whether public policy can, or should, level the playing field. Today, however, a new realm of science is poised to upend the debate — not by declaring victory for one side or the other, nor even by calling a tie, but rather by revealing they were never in opposition in the first place. Through this new vantage, nature and nurture are not even entirely distinguishable, because genes and environment don’t operate in isolation; they influence each other and to a very real degree even create each other. The new field is called sociogenomics, a fusion of behavioral science and genetics that I have been closely involved with for over a decade. Though the field is still in its infancy, its philosophical implications are staggering. It has the potential to rewrite a great deal of what we think we know about who we are and how we got that way.
ref: 2025 March 13, Dalton Conley, “A New Scientific Field Is Recasting Who We Are and How We Got That Way”, in New York Times:
synonyms: differentiable
glosses: Able, or easily able to be distinguished.
Derived terms: distinguishability
distinguishableness
distinguishably
nondistinguishable
undistinguishable