Meanings
- That can be the subject of speculation.
Just as the speculative intellect is constituted by all speculable things as they are speculable, so the practical intellect is constituted by operable things as they are operable.
1966, Edward P. Mahoney, The Early Psychology of Agostino Nifo, page 7105 more examples
And hence is it that when the rational faculty having perpended the convenience and inconvenience, or good and evil of its objects, and ended its act of Deliberation, adhæres unto, or fixes upon one as more convenient then the others; this ſecond act or Adhæſion may be in the general (i. e. on reſpect of things both ſpeculable and practical)[…]
1650, Walter Charleton, transl., A Ternary of Paradoxes. The { Magnetick Cure of Wounds. Nativity of Tartar in Wine. Image of God in Man., London: […] James Flesher for William Lee, translation of original by Joh. Bapt. Van Helmont, page 260Firſt, becauſe it is a kind of Memory, for the Intellect reflecting on things Agible, that is, on things done, or to be done, hath a relation to the Conſcience, as the Intellect reflecting on things ſpeculable, hath its relation to the Memory.
1660, Robert Sanderson, Several Cases of Conscience Discussed in Ten Lectures in the Divinity School at Oxford, London: […] Tho. Leach, pages 18–19The source from which a scientific proof proceeds is neither something individual as such, nor something universal as such; rather, it is something, a speculable object, taken according to an absolute consideration. And both individuality and universality are outside the absolute consideration of any speculable object which functions as the subject genus of a science, i. e., as the source from which a scientific proof proceeds.
1959, Edward Aloysius Pace, James Hugh Ryan, The New Scholasticism, page 77They are not metaphysical proofs because they do not concern transcendental aspects of things, i.e., speculable objects intrinsically independent of matter for being and for being known.
1965, Edward Dwyer Simmons, Essays on Knowledge and Methodology, page 108To be sure, for Aristotle and other Post-Socratic lovers of theory, the world with which they were immediately concerned was not only changing and sensible but also intelligible, objectifiable and speculable. It was not merely a life-world in which they found themselves already existing; it was also a world of speculable objects for their speculable faith.
1966, Richard C. Hinners, Ideology and Analysis: A Rehabilitation of Metaphysical Ontology, Desclée De Brouwer, page 172
Origin
- Latinspeculābilis
- Englishspeculable
From Latin speculābilis; compare Middle English speculable.
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
speculable. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/speculable
“speculable.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/speculable. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “speculable,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/speculable.
Source: speculable on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.