Edible and Eatable Are Not Quite the Same
Edible means fit to be eaten. Eatable, its English-rooted cousin, usually means merely palatable.
Edible means safe or suitable to be eaten. Its native English rival *eatable* has drifted into a narrower job: edible usually means not poisonous, while eatable means actually pleasant enough to eat. A wild mushroom can be edible and barely eatable, and a badly burnt dinner is edible but not eatable.
- Fit to be eaten. *Edible mushrooms.*
- Something that can be eaten. *Edibles on the table.*
- Eatable — palatable. *Barely eatable.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Adjective | edible | Edible flowers. |
| Noun | edibility | Questionable edibility. |
| Variant | eatable | Hardly eatable. |
| Opposite | inedible | Inedible roots. |
| Related | edacious | An edacious appetite. |
How it is used in a sentence
- Not every edible mushroom is worth eating.Edible means safe, not delicious.
- The soup was edible but not eatable.Safe, but unpleasant.
- Edible packaging is being trialled.Food science.
Latin and English pairs
- edible / eatable — Latin and English roots
- potable / drinkable — the same pattern
- visible / seeable — the Latin one won outright
- audible / hearable — again the Latin one
- Register — the Latin form usually sounds more formal
From Late Latin *edibilis*, from Latin *edere*, to eat — related to English *eat* through a shared Indo-European root.
Edible or eatable?
Edible means safe to eat. Eatable means palatable. Something can be one without the other.
Are eat and edible related?
Yes, distantly. Both descend from the same Indo-European root, through Germanic and Latin respectively.