considerable

Pluralconsiderables

1. 1
   adjective

   Large in amount, size, or extent.

   The project required a considerable investment of time and money.

   There was considerable damage to the building after the storm.

   Similarlarge, substantial, sizable

   Oppositesmall, slight, negligible

   Note

   Here size matters, not importance, and the word sits easily before mass nouns and plurals alike: considerable money, considerable commotion, considerable reductions. Good-sized is a homelier near-synonym. Joseph C. Lincoln's Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913) clips it to consider'ble in a character's talk about storm repairs, a sign the word was at home in everyday speech as well as in reports and schedules.

2. 2
   adjective

   Significant and worth taking into account or paying serious attention to.

   The discovery was of considerable importance to the field of medicine.

   He is a person of considerable influence in local politics.

   Similarsignificant, substantial, great, major, notable

   Oppositeinsignificant, negligible, minor, slight

   Note

   Built exactly as it looks: consider plus -able, so the word literally describes what is able, or worthy, to be considered. It sits naturally with people and positions. A considerable figure in an industry is someone who counts, not someone large. When the noun is a quantity rather than a person or a matter, the "large amount" meaning usually takes over.

3. 3
   nounobsolete

   A matter or point that must be taken into account; a consideration.

   The judge laid out each considerable before passing his sentence.

   Among the many considerables, the cost of the voyage troubled them most.

   Note

   Long out of use, this noun survives in prose like Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), where politicians treat reason of state as "the first considerable." Its plural was considerables. Outside deliberate pastiche, write consideration instead. A modern reader will hear considerable as an adjective whose noun has gone missing.

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