taskable

== English == === Etymology === From task +‎ -able. === Adjective === taskable (not comparable) (technology) To which tasks can be assigned. (US, obsolete, historical) (of an enslaved person held on a plantation) Considered to be capable of performing labour, especially field labour. 1789, record of sale of enslaved people by Thomas Washington, cited in Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 198, footnote 85,[1] [The 16-year-old boy has] been taskable these 3 years past. 1796, court record, Neufville v. Mitchell, 1 Desaussure 480, South Carolina, cited in Helen Tunnicliff Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases concerning American Slavery and the Negro, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1929, pp. 277-278,[2] defendant […] states […] many of them were diseased and not taskable; 1813, Bahama Gazette, 19 December, 1813, cited in Howard Johnson, The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783-1933, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, p. 29,[3] to oblige Planters to plant a certain quantity of Provisions to each taskable Negro ==== See also ==== able-bodied === Noun === taskable (plural taskables) (US, obsolete, historical) On a plantation exploiting an enslaved labour force, a person considered to be capable of performing labour, especially field labour. Synonyms: taskable hand, working slave 1937, Guion Griffis Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, Chapel Hill, p. 83, cited in Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, Boston: Harper, 1941, Chapter 5, p. 128,[6] The very young and the old were usually engaged in the house, while the full “taskables” were more profitably employed in the field. === Anagrams === skatable