Dodging a narrow bullet

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 7/30/07, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this how "comfortable" came to be applicable to both me and my
> chair? For that matter, how did either of those senses develop from
> "comfort" + "-able"?

OED gives the etymology as:
"[a. Anglo-F. confortable, f. confort-er to COMFORT, on L. type
*confort{amac}bilis; for the active force of the suffix, see -BLE,
last paragraph. (Mod.F. confortable is from Eng.)] "

Last paragraph of the entry for "-ble" reads:
"As here stated, adjs. in -bili-, -ble, were originally active (and
neuter) as well as passive. Many of the former exist in Eng., e.g.
capable, comfortable, suitable, agreeable, conformable, companionable,
durable, equable; but the majority have become obsolete or remain only
with a passive force, as in credible, audible, flexible, which is also
the only use of -able as a living formative, e.g. bearable, eatable,
likeable, preferable, insufferable, saleable. (For exhaustive
treatment of these words see F. Hall Eng. Adjectives in -able; London
1877.)"

As it happens, the full text of Fitzedward Hall's _On English
Adjectives in "-able"_ is available on Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=xA0SAAAAMAAJ

See pp. 51-54 on the double meaning of "comfortable" as 'inducing
comfort' or 'feeling comfort'. For some reason this polysemy doesn't
bother people, but when "nauseous" gets extended from 'inducing
nausea' to 'feeling nausea' it becomes a pet peeve (for the peevishly
inclined).

Some adjectives get extended the other way, from 'feeling X' to
'inducing X'. During ESPN's broadcast of tonight's Cubs-Phillies game,
correspondent Erin Andrews was dispatched to the interior of the old
manual scoreboard at Wrigley Field. She reported, "It's really
claustrophobic in here."  OED's got that usage ("Of a place, etc.:
confined, restricting; inducing claustrophobia") back to 1946.


--Ben Zimmer

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