pierceable

English

Etymology

pierce +‎ -able

Adjective

pierceable (comparative more pierceable, superlative most pierceable)

1. Capable of being pierced; penetrable.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 5:

     A ſhadie groue not farr away they ſpide, / That promiſt ayde the tempeſt to withſtand: / Whoſe loftie trees yclad with ſommers pride, / Did ſpred ſo broad, that heauens light did hide, / Not perceable with power of any ſtarr:

   • 1908, Henry James, “Preface”, in The Portrait of a Lady (The Novels and Tales of Henry James; III), New York edition, volume I, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC; republished as The Portrait of a Lady (EBook #2833), United States: Project Gutenberg, 1 September 2001:

     The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million—a number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather; every one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will.

   • 1949, James Beard, The Fireside Cook Book‎^[1], New York: Simon and Schuster, page 201:

     Boil the potatoes in their jackets until tender and pierceable.

   • 1995, Mark Krikorian, statement given at the Hearing before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 1st Session, 17 May, 1995, in Legal Immigration Reform Proposals, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996, p. 136,^[2]

     Whichever method is chosen for deciding the level of immigration, the question arises whether the cap should be “pierceable” or not. Although “pierceable cap” has an Orwellian ring to it, the issue boils down to whether increases in immediate-family immigration (assuming it remains unlimited) would be subtracted from the numbers allotted to immigrants selected by the point system (a true cap) or whether the numerical limit would apply only to those chosen through a point system.