The Merriam-Webster seems to suggest that it is. But I can’t say I have ever encountered it being used. Is it a word that fell out of use while its opposite survived. I mean we usuallt use “vulnerable” (not the exact same meaning but close enough) and “defeatable” when we mean “beatable”.
Google only reports 85,400 hits for it, most of which appear to be definitions or jokes. So, yeah; I’m feeling too lazy to run to the OED, but I suspect that it was used more at one time. One legitimate usage is “vincible ignorance,”, a Catholic term for ignorance (error) that could have been corrected by due diligence, which is thus more blameworthy than “invincible ignorance,” which can only be corrected through great effort, but less blameworthy than “studied ignorance” or “affected ignorance,” which actually requires effort to preserve.
You suspect correctly. Not marked obsolete in OED, although the latest cite is 1891. Here’s the entry with selected cites.
1891? I can’t remember reading it in Dickens or Blake or Wordsworth. It MIGHT be there but its not a word that one would forget, considering that its opposite is so well known.
And OED needs updating, it is extinct if it has’nt been used in a 118 years.
I’m quite gruntled to read these answers.
You’ve quite some nerve to chalantly mosey in here and say that.
I have it on good authority that it’s a word which film star Vince Vaughn uses when he’s out at clubs:
“See the redhead in the strapless over there? She’s totally Vincible.”
There’s a lot of these, but I just don’t have the energy to go find them - quite defatigable in my search, really.
So why does the original, vincible which probably came earlier become extinct while the opposite which no doubt arrived later survive.
Vincible comes from from the Latin word vincere, meaning to conquer. So vini, vidi, vici “I came, I saw, I conquered”, and amor vincit omnia “Love conquers all”, and words like victor, Victoria, victorious, evict. So something that is vincible is able to be conquered (as aldiboronti’s OED cite clearly shows). Why is invincible more common than vincible? I don’t know. Maybe there are many other words to describe that concept, and being unbeatable is a more noteworthy quality so invincible is used more, but I don’t think I could argue that convincingly.
I believe in Macman you had two options–you could make yourself Invincible, or you could make yourself Vincible.
I think the OP is quite couth to ask this question.
You’re on the right track. Vincible means capable of being conquered (Latin vincibilis, equiv. to vinc(ere) to overcome + -ibilis). Prefixing it with “in-” negates the meaning; therefore, invincible is something that cannot be overcome.
Just the same, I’ve found the responses on the whole to be whelming.
BTW, I thought there was a term for words like these - a commonly used word with a negating (or otherwise modifying) prefix, where the unprefixed word has fallen into disuse, or nearly so, or maybe was never commonly used in the first place. If so, I can’t find it.
(I leave it to somebody more ept or ert to do so … )
Oh come now. Show a little ruth.
Surely such lexicographical inquiries are patently surd!
I have a list of those somewhere. When I’m more combobulated, I’ll pull it out.
Tripod wrote a funny song full of these words - Kempt.
Course after a few drinks, some lucky guy may instead find himself totally in Vin-
WHAT? 