What is the difference between extensible and extendable

Extensible seems to me to indicate stretchability whereas extendable suggests an opening out or lengthening. An elastic band is extensible, ie: it can be stretched, whereas my lunch hour is extendable, ie: it can be added to, but an hour is an hour and cannot be stretched.

That may be a purely engineering view of it though, we do value our lunch hour. There is also extensile which seems to mean the same as extensible. That makes plenty of sense, but it seems some think that exactly the opposite should be the case. I think if I have to settle one way or the other I'll opt for your definitions, dxb.

Don't go extensiling things. Joined: Sep Piedmont Region of Virginia, U In reply to: we were taught that theoretically there was no such thing as a non-extensible material How about something like mica? Interestingly enough, OED has "extendable, obs.

Louisville, Kentucky. So, this one gives extensibility and extensible as deriviatives whatever that means of extend. I've included these two usages as a matter of interest, though perhaps not clarity. I wouldn't have used extensible in either of these examples. Maybe because it's a UK site? Interestingly, it has no separate def. Oh, and jfrt: I pronounce chameleon kuh-MEE-uh l -yun. Though not with 4 syllables, exactly: mee-ul is more of a dipthong of the ee and the uh vowel sounds--and I hadn't even been aware that I added the uh until I tried writing it out!

Aboriginal vs. Coelomate vs. Ocean vs. Judge vs. Flag vs. Forbear vs. Awesomely vs. Fat vs. Sonhood vs. Ricochet vs. Channel vs. Trending Comparisons. Mandate vs. Ivermectin vs. Skinwalker vs. Socialism vs. I use extendable in cases where it means the opposite of retractable.

In other words, a telescoping wand is extendable, the legs of my camera tripod are extendable. I use extensible when I mean that the functionality of something may be increased or enhanced by the addition of an extension- an add-on module or component. My web browser is extensible because I can add an Adobe Flash extension which allows me to view flash content.

I think it would sound a bit odd to talk about my web-browser being extendable. There are lots and lots of these. They usually came to us that way straight from Latin, and seldom mean anything different from each other. One may be more rare than another, though. Other variant adjectives, though, are merely duplicative. Typical examples are extendable , extendible , and extensible. Extensible was, through the midth century, the most common form, but today it trails extendable by a substantial margin, while extendible continues to appear infrequently.

Writers and editors ought to settle on the most firmly established form-- extendable , which is as well formed as the variants--and trouble their minds with weightier matters. Extensible seems to me to indicate stretchability whereas extendable suggests an opening out or lengthening.

An elastic band is extensible, i. There is also extensile which seems to mean the same as extensible. I use the terms as Jim does in the context of Computer Science. In a computer program, if I add subroutines or blocks it is extendable - I can add more blocks.

If the program is extensible, the individual blocks may be made more complex by modification, usually adding flexibility. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Can anyone please help me to understand the difference between the 2 words? I for one understand that the words have a similar meaning but when is it correct to use them? I use "extendable" for when it's about physical objects such as couch, a spyglass or the pipe that I have at my vacuum cleaner, things like that, that can be folded and unfolded.

What about "extensible" though? I rarely use the latter in conversation and writing and I want to clarify for some friends because to my understanding, does it refer to add parts to an object, in a way, expanding it? Is it a good synonym with expansion? Thank you and I apologize if this was discussed before but I would like some good examples to know in what cases these words should be used.

I think of extensible as "able to be added to with minimal disruption or reorganization". You're not the only one who rarely uses the word.

I don't think it's very common outside of some technical contexts. One place I've seen it used is software design. An extensible architecture is one where a program is designed such that new functionality can be added without too much restructuringof the existing code. So someone might say:. This is discussed further in the Wikipedia article on Extensibility.