companionable

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

companion +‎ -able

Adjective[edit]

companionable (comparative more companionable, superlative most companionable)

  1. Having the characteristics of a worthy companion; friendly and sociable.
    • 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], Wuthering Heights, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, [], →OCLC:
      She returned presently, bringing a smoking basin and a basket of work; and, having placed the former on the hob, drew in her seat, evidently pleased to find me so companionable.
    • 1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1910, Chapter V, p. 178, [1]
      I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
    • 1887, Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography, translated by John Addington Symonds, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, Chapter CXXI, p. 240, [2]
      All the disagreeable circumstances of my prison had become, as it were, to me friendly and companionable; not one of them gave me annoyance.
    • 1908, G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1910, Chapter IX, p. 154, [3]
      Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, and a companionable silence fell between the three men.
    • 1914, James Stephens, The Demi-Gods, New York: Macmillan, 1921, Book II, pp. 126-7, [4]
      They are a companionable food; they make a pleasant, crunching noise when they are bitten, and so, when one is eating carrots, one can listen to the sound of one's eating and make a story from it.
    • 1992, Toni Morrison, Jazz, New York: Vintage, 2004, p. 100,
      Bottles of rye, purgative waters and eaux for every conceivable toilette made a companionable click in his worn carpet bag.
    • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, pages 35-36:
      The up and down lines ran next to each other in vault-like tunnels, whereas the Tube trains would occupy their own tunnels. That's why the cut-and-cover lines are more human than the Tubes. They are more companionable. You can see people going the other way - your perspective is broadened.

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