explainability

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English explain

Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlom

Proto-Italic *-ðlom

Proto-Italic *-ðlis

Latin -bilis

Latin -ābilis

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-ts

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts

Proto-Italic *-tāts

Latin -tās

Latin -abilitas

Middle French -abletébor.

Middle English -ablete

English -ability

English explainability

From explain + -ability.

Noun

explainability (usually uncountable, plural explainabilities)

1. The state of being explainable.
   • 2025 November 1, Aisha Down, quoting Kenneth Church, “Ducking annoying: why has iPhone’s autocorrect function gone haywire?”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎^[1], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 18 October 2026:

     “There’s this whole area of explainability, interpretability, where people want to understand how stuff works,” said Church. “With the older methods, you can actually get an answer to what’s going on. The latest, greatest stuff is kind of like magic. It works a lot better than the older stuff. But when it goes, it’s really bad.”

Synonyms

• explicability