viable

Pluralviables

1. 1
   adjective

   Able to be carried out in practice; possible and worth considering as a real option.

   After months of testing, the team finally had a viable plan for the product launch.

   Solar power became a viable alternative once installation costs dropped.

   Similarfeasible, workable, practicable, realistic, practical

   Oppositeunworkable, impractical, unrealistic

   Note

   Behind the practical sense stands the Latin viābilis, "passable," which shaped how the French borrowing came to be used: a viable plan is one you can actually get through. It sits most naturally beside option, alternative, route and solution. It also asks a narrower question than possible does. The question is not whether something could happen, but whether it is a realistic course to take.

2. 2
   adjective

   Capable of working or succeeding, especially in a way that can be sustained.

   Investors questioned whether the startup was financially viable.

   The new funding made the recycling program viable for the first time.

   Similarsustainable, workable

   Oppositeunsustainable, unworkable

   Note

   Here the test is endurance rather than the "can it be done" meaning: a scheme can be possible yet fail to keep paying its way. David Clough's "The long road that led to Beeching" in RAIL (2023) uses it of railway operations judged grossly uneconomic, which no better equipment would make viable. The typical pattern is make something viable, often with financially in front.

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a newborn or fetus, able to survive and live independently outside the womb.

   The infant was born at twenty-six weeks but was deemed viable by the doctors.

   A fetus is generally considered viable after about twenty-four weeks of pregnancy.

4. 4
   adjective

   Able to live, grow, and develop.

   Researchers checked whether the frozen embryos were still viable.

   Only a fraction of the seeds remained viable after years in the vault.

   Note

   A biologist's term, applied to cells, spores, seeds and embryos. The question is whether they keep the capacity to grow and reproduce under given conditions, and a stored sample can lose it over time. Unlike the newborn's independent survival, nothing here has to live on its own. It only has to stay alive and able to develop.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   Any organism capable of staying alive and continuing to develop.

   After staining, the technician separated the viables from the dead cells.

   Each viable was placed in its own container for further study.

   Note

   The adjective turned into a count noun, with the plural viables. It is used where living material must be told apart from dead or arrested material in the same sample, such as stained cells in an assay. It belongs to laboratory shorthand. Elsewhere, phrases built on the biological adjective, such as viable cells or viable organisms, are the safer choice.

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