How does one distinguish between ‘divided’ and ‘divisible’?
I realised today that I use the terms divisible and dividable interchangeably, even though there may be a difference between them.
If they are in fact different, I’m interested in any general rule that might apply to a large case of similarly related terms as well.
In common usage there may be little or no difference in meaning; but in mathematical writing, divisible has an accepted usage not held by dividable. Oxford Dictionary gives “Mathematics (of a number) containing another number a number of times without a remainder “24 is divisible by 4, as sense 2 of divisible. Sometimes redundant wording such as evenly divisible is used, and I suppose evenly dividable could be used, but it isn’t.
I don’t know of a general rule. No example of that. In fact, as seen via links in google book, dividable is a word respectable enough to use, in spite of suffering some disrespect, as in following :
Use dividable only if you want to appear strange… GoogleFight:
