What does "taskable" mean?

On a plantation exploiting an enslaved labour force, a person considered to be capable of performing labour, especially field labour.

What is a synonym for "taskable"?

Common synonyms include: taskable hand, working slave.

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
On a plantation exploiting an enslaved labour force, a person considered to be capable of performing labour, especially field labour. US, historical, obsolete
"Those [slaves] actually in the field were 44 taskables, while the remaining 13½ were employed as cart drivers, nurses, cooks for the negroes, carpenters, gardeners, house servants and stock minders […]."

Adjective

1
To which tasks can be assigned. not-comparable
"a taskable intelligent agent; a taskable sensor"
2
(of an enslaved person held on a plantation) Considered to be capable of performing labour, especially field labour. US, historical, not-comparable, obsolete
"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, [The 16-year-old boy has] been taskable these 3 years past."

"a taskable intelligent agent; a taskable sensor"

From task + -able.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.