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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
viable
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a practical/viable proposition (=likely to be possible or successful)
▪ A complete ban on strikes is not a practical proposition.
a viable alternative (=that can work as successfully)
▪ Hydrogen offers a viable alternative to petrol and diesel.
a viable business (=one that is likely to be successful)
▪ It soon became clear that the restaurant was not a viable business.
a viable/practical option (=something you can choose that will be successful)
▪ Surgery may be a viable option when all else fails.
commercially viable (=certain to make money)
▪ The project is no longer commercially viable .
economically viable/feasible (=likely to be or remain financially successful)
▪ Most of the coal mines in the area are no longer economically viable.
financially viable
▪ Is the project financially viable?
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
commercially
▪ Two other developments have helped to make mains signalling commercially viable.
▪ These approaches produced successes, and the subfield of expert systems became commercially viable.
▪ A number of grants and incentives are available for projects which are socially desirable, but not commercially viable without support.
▪ They've devised a series of guidelines that will enable the beauty spot to stay both commercially viable and beautiful.
▪ Still, I suppose the play's commercially viable.
▪ Given the limited scale of release in Britain, the results were encouraging rather than commercially viable.
▪ The point is to be commercially viable.
▪ Indeed, at least one unspecified outfit is thought to have decided that the Architecture-Neutral Format is commercially viable now.
economically
▪ In recent years coal gasification has become increasingly economically viable due to technological developments.
▪ But they say that around £100 million is needed to ensure such projects are economically viable in the short term.
▪ Nuclear power has never been economically viable.
▪ At present such storage is not economically viable.
▪ Changing print technology will simply serve to reduce further these barriers to entry, making even lower print runs economically viable.
▪ Observers have pointed out that the Gabcikovo power plant could only be economically viable if a substantial amount of water is diverted.
▪ The development of these was not remotely economically viable at pre-1974 oil prices.
▪ It might also finally make recycling economically viable.
financially
▪ The growth of competition put paid to repeated attempts by the railways and the political authorities to establish a financially viable railway.
▪ The project needs orders of between 180 and 200 aircraft before production is financially viable.
▪ With a minimum wage this nursery would no longer have been financially viable.
▪ The first two figures revealed that everyone was looking to the farm to be financially viable.
▪ It was essential that we become more professional in our outlook and make ourselves more financially viable.
▪ Many builders do not consider it financially viable to maintain a stock of materials at a yard.
▪ The alternative route was chosen on three criteria: that it should be environmentally acceptable, operationally effective and financially viable.
▪ It's the result of years of work by scientists at a nuclear establishment which is branching out to stay financially viable.
more
▪ A merger, Nicholson added, is a more viable alternative to keeping the brewery open than the planned management buy-out.
▪ The investment remains beyond reach for many, but the choices today are much broader and more viable than 10 years ago.
▪ Now that it is a more viable way of getting the best possible house, young design talent could quickly transform domestic building.
▪ And it would reduce spending, limit special interest influence and make challengers more viable.
▪ The approach has generally been both more realistic and more viable since those days.
■ NOUN
alternative
▪ It is slightly longer and more expensive, but is nevertheless a viable alternative should the Qatif alignment be politically unfeasible.
▪ General practitioners may need viable alternatives to Graham Butland's proposals to avoid losing responsibility for their practices.
▪ Do you have a viable alternative?
▪ However, because a Court Scheme requires the co-operation of the target it is not a viable alternative to a hostile bid.
▪ The electrical giants of the age, Siemens and Edison, were not yet able to offer a viable alternative.
▪ Without a viable alternative, the impact of higher taxes is to raise business costs and reduce consumer incomes.
▪ Your reviewer recommends Gombrich's Story of Art as a viable alternative.
▪ A merger, Nicholson added, is a more viable alternative to keeping the brewery open than the planned management buy-out.
business
▪ We are suffering the failure of viable businesses.
▪ Buller said he and his partner believe there are now enough home computer users to make their service a viable business.
▪ What keeps the propliners of the world still going as viable business propositions is an item known as the bottom line.
▪ He is looking for a partner to retain the pub as a viable business.
▪ But setting up a viable business requires more of its leaders than good looks and a talent for poetry.
option
▪ Most schools are in such poor physical condition and are so poorly equipped that this is unlikely to be a viable option.
▪ But a few weeks on the job convinced him that mere maintenance was not, in this instance, a viable option.
▪ This leaves criminal prosecution as the only viable option.
▪ This is not a viable option in the long run.
▪ It would be up to the scientists to decide which is the viable option and which belongs to the realm of science fiction.
▪ This, it seems, was not a viable option.
▪ Moving the company was not a viable option.
▪ As far as business is concerned, a federal takeover of health care was never a viable option.
proposition
▪ Recording the electrical activity of single brain cells in mammals only became a viable proposition in the 1950s.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Do you think this is a viable proposition?
▪ Nuclear energy is the only viable alternative to coal or gas.
▪ They are in favour of the program, but they want strong assurances that it is viable.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Response to radiotherapy was assessed and further laser treatment performed if a viable tumour was identified.
▪ The investment remains beyond reach for many, but the choices today are much broader and more viable than 10 years ago.
▪ The only viable route to a future of growth is to allow these basic human activities free rein.
▪ These approaches produced successes, and the subfield of expert systems became commercially viable.
▪ These are the kinds of decisions on which viable performance improvement is ultimately based.
▪ This leaves criminal prosecution as the only viable option.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Viable

Viable \Vi"a*ble\, a. [F., from vie life, L. vita. See Vital.] (Law) Capable of living; born alive and with such form and development of organs as to be capable of living; -- said of a newborn, or a prematurely born, infant.

Note: Unless he [an infant] is born viable, he acquires no rights, and can not transmit them to his heirs, and is considered as if he had never been born.
--Bouvier.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
viable

1828, from French viable "capable of life" (1530s), from vie "life" (from Latin vita "life;" see vital) + -able. Originally of newborn infants; generalized sense is first recorded 1848. Related: Viably.

Wiktionary
viable

a. 1 Able to live on its own (as for a newborn.) 2 Able to be done, possible. 3 In (context biology English), able to live and develop.

WordNet
viable
  1. adj. capable of being done with means at hand and circumstances as they are [syn: feasible, executable, practicable, workable]

  2. capable of life or normal growth and development; "viable seeds"; "a viable fetus"

Usage examples of "viable".

Now, once again, in the push to translate his prediction theory into a viable production prototype, feedback emerged as the focal point and final obstacle in his war work with Bigelow.

Solmev Scale, the first attempted terraforming, the first failed terraforming -- a world bypassed after the black-hole death of Old Earth because of the Hawking drive, because of the imperatives of the Hegira, because no one wanted to live on the rusty sphere of permafrost when the galaxy offered a near-infinite number of prettier, healthier, more viable worlds.

For example, an orthodontist near my home decided that the baby boomer niche represented a viable secondary market for his practice, the primary market being teenagers and young adults.

The Sharani were triadic by nature and necessity since it required three parents to produce viable offspring: sire, bloodmother, and wombmother.

He had fallen in love with a Sharani and her mate, those triadic women who required three parents to produce viable offspring, father, bloodmother, and wombmother.

In fact, viable anthrax spores can still be found along the cattle trails of the Old West.

So it should be quite easy to take an unfertilized turkey egg, inject a dodo blastula, and, with luck, hatch a perfectly viable dodo chick.

Efforts, however, are underway to establish a viable predictive model which will integrate the various tectonic, geologic, hydrological, and seismic dynamics presently under investigation by Geosciences Department personnel.

Balanced within the tension of opposites, the argument that Kundera consistently misrepresents women or fails to offer alternatives to their abuse and mistreatment is as viable as the claim that he exposes, critiques, and deconstructs, even though this double possibility must mean that the edge of both arguments is dulled.

A mutant 79-byte creature proved not only to be viable, but soon outbred and outpaced the 80-bytes.

National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and professionals in other fields, the profiling process will continue to be refined and be a viable investigative aid to law enforcement.

But it was a viable, working community, thick with commerce and Shir government.

On the Unallied Planet of Tlulax in the distant Thalim solar system, his people ran organ farms, growing human hearts, lungs, kidneys, and other body parts from viable cells.

Article 312 of the Civil Code of France accords a minimum of one hundred and eighty and a maximum of three hundred days for the gestation of a viable child.

The behavioral analysis of threatening oral and written communications in extortions, bombings, and terrorist incidents is another viable application of artificial intelligence technology to real-world law enforcement problems.