What are the adjectives ending in -bile?
In Italian, there are groups of adjectives that have the same ending. In this case, we’re going to focus on those ending in -bile (either –able or –ible).
This specific ending comes from Latin and refers to the possibility or the ability to have a specific characteristic.
Their equivalents in English usually end in -ble (also either -able or -ible) so they are easy to recognize and learn. Here’s a list of common adjectives ending in -bile:
- accessibile: accessible
- accettabile: acceptable
- compatibile: compatible
- comprensibile: comprehensible
- concepibile: conceivable
- credibile: credible
- desiderabile: desirable
- paragonabile: comparable
- possibile: possible
- responsabile: responsible
- sensibile: sensitive (if you want to say sensible, then you can say sensato)
- vulnerabile: vulnerable
What are the adjectives starting with in-, im-, ir- and ending in -bile?
Like in English, in Italian we can say the opposite of an adjective just by adding two letters at the beginning of it: either in-, im-, or -ir. Think of the words possible vs. impossible, or credible vs. incredible.
It’s the same logic in Italian. We tend to use in- much more often than im-.
However, there are some exceptions: im- is usually added to those adjectives starting with a “p” or an “m“.
There is a much less common one which is ir- for those words starting with an “r“. We’ll give you the opposite of the first five adjectives that we saw above.
We’ll leave the rest to you. Make sure you apply the rules we just gave you.
- inaccessibile: inaccessible
- inaccettabile: inacceptable
- incompatibile: incompatible
- incomprensibile: incomprehensible
- inconcepibile: inconceivable
