From Middle English tractable, tractabel, from Latin tractābilis, from tractō ("take in hand, handle, manage"), frequentative of trahō ("draw").

• (British, America) IPA: /ˈtɹæk.tə.bəl/

tractable

1. (of people) Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed.

   Synonyms: docile, manageable, governable

2. (of a problem) Easy to deal with or manage
   • 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “Some Instances of the Folly which the Ignorance of Women Generates; with Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement that a Revolution in Female Manners may Naturally be Expected to Produce”, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC ↗, page 440 ↗:

     I have always found horses, an animal I am attached to, very tractable when treated with humanity and steadiness.

   • 1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 61, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC ↗:

     Of all the tractable, equal-tempered, attached, and faithful beings that ever lived, I believe he was the most so.

   • 1909, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter 18, in The Bronze Bell:

     [T]his matter of the vanishing bridge must have been arranged in order to put him in a properly subdued and tractable frame of mind.

   • 2008, Lynn Flewelling, Shadows Return‎, →ISBN, page 96:

     Some masters can be quite kind if you're meek and tractable.

3. Capable of being shaped; malleable.
   • 1866, P. Le Neve Foster, "Report on the Art-Workmanship Prizes ↗", reprinted in Journal of the Society of Arts, March 2, 1966:

     I need not point out the advantages of modelling in a material as durable as stone. . . . Mixed up with just enough water to form a stiff paste, it accommodates itself to the touch of the modelling tool. . . . There are two inherent difficulties in using it—one, it is not so tractable as clay. . . .

4. (obsolete) Capable of being handled or touched.

   Synonyms: palpable, practicable, feasible, serviceable

   • 1707, Thomas Brown, “Moll Quarles's Answer to Mother Creswell of Famous Memory”, in The Second Volume of the Works of Mr. Tho. Brown, containing Letters from the Dead to the Living both Serious and Comical, part three, page 184:

     At leaſt five Hundred of theſe reforming Vultures are daily plundering our Pockets, and ranſacking our Houſes, leaving me ſometimes not one pair of Tractable Buttocks in my Vaulting-School to provide for my Family, or earn me ſo much as a Pudding for my next Sundays Dinner : [...]

5. (mathematics) Sufficiently operationalizable or useful to allow a mathematical calculation to proceed toward a solution.
6. (computer science, of a decision problem) Algorithmically solvable fast enough to be practically relevant, typically in polynomial time.

• intractable

• tractability
• tractableness
• tractably

• French: docile, conciliant, malléable
• Portuguese: manejável
• Russian: покорный

• French: malléable
• Portuguese: dúctil

• Portuguese: manejável
• Russian: пода́тливый