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• estimable •

Pronunciation: es-tê-mê-bêl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Admirable, deserving of esteem, worth of respect, respected, valued. 2. Possible to estimate.

Notes: Occasionally, we bump into "passive adjectives", those ending in the suffix -able, made from verbs containing the suffix -ate without the suffix, e.g. alienable, calculable, educable. Today's Good Word belongs among these. The adverb is the expectable estimably and the noun, estimability or the clunkier estimableness.

In Play: The most widely used sense of estimable has wandered rather far off its semantic track: "Rhoda Book's estimable little tome, "How I Worked the System" is worthy of a serious read." The usually precedes this word when used with a person's name: "I found the estimable Al Falfa, a local farmer, out standing in his field."

Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from Latin aestimatus "valued, esteemed", the past participle of aestimare, from an older form aestumare "to value, rate, esteem". English, pirate that it is on the high lexical seas, also borrowed the French version of the same word, estimer "to value", preserving the French pronunciation for esteem. The ultimate source may have been from Old Latin ais-temos "one who cuts copper", referring to someone in the Roman Republic who minted money. But the trail ends here on this questionable derivation. No evidence of it can be found in any other Indo-European language.

I wonder if meaning 2 will eventually require using 'estimateable', which doesn't exist now. Meaning 1 goes so much further, and holds so much meaning, that the two are perhaps sufficiently far apart to need different words.

But the negative, inestimable, still works. So what do we do with that?

According to the OED, meaning 2 is obsolete.

Looks like I'm perhaps behind the times, eh?

The times being what they are, for the most part, I’d say you’re well-situated.

I could start a new post about this wee discovery, but no one but you would take any notice anyway, so . . .
. . . didja know there’s an entry in the OED (admittedly ‘U.S. colloquial and dialect. rare.’) with ‘qu’ not followed by a vowel?
A word of English-language origin and with at least 140 years of usage. Clue you in later, if necessary.

Well, I got nothin'. However, going through the Qs in my big dictionary, I did learn that there is such a thing as Quasimodo Sunday. Also called Low Sunday, it's the Sunday after Easter, which makes it April 7 this year. Veddy interestink. I hope I remember so I can send a weird e-mail to all my friends and family!

And I’ve always thought Quasimodo was just a name. (Actually, no need to capitalize it now.) Didn’t even have a hunch!
Might as well loose the felis domesticus from the sack:
it’s sqush, at least in the OED, earliest citation in
Huckleberry Finn. Probably coined therein,
but a few other usages noted.

Adding: typical of trivial-minded me, I noted nothing about the meaning!
a. intransitive. To collapse into a soft, pulpy mass.
b. To squelch, squeeze messily.

Edit the second: I’m sorry if I gave the impression that the word
began with ‘qu’.

I am with you Slava, on this one. If esteem has taken over estimable, as it clearly has, then 'estimatable' is necessary to convey meaning 2.

Love your sqush, Brogine, by the way. It should be widely used, just for the joy of its missing vowel feature. I will endeavour to introduce it in my limited circle.

Thanks. I might also have noted that despite being colloquial and rare, the fact that it’s not a synonym or variant spelling of squish or squash adds a bit to its bona fides.

Oh, I use that word quite frequently, but I've always thought it would be spelled "squush". (I've never looked it up.) And in the cleanup project that currently occupies much of my time, I'm finding entirely too many things that are squushy from neglect.

That spelling is entirely reasonable, yet it’s not present as an alternative in the OED, nor used in any of the citations.

However, I see a few words with the sequence at issue:
obliquus
ventriloquus (obsolete)
inaniloquution (also obsolete, unfortunately).

All the best.