What does intractable mean?
Word: Intractable
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Intractable means very hard to deal with, control or solve.
How do you spell intractable?
Syllables: in - trac - ta - ble
Tricky part: Two vowels after the r catch pupils out. Each one is an a, but habit pushes them towards ible at the end.
Watch out for: intractible, intrectable
Memory tip: Imagine someone tugging at a tight knot and groaning aah, aah: two a's for the two vowels after the r.
Intractable in a sentence
Example 1: The two neighbours have an intractable disagreement over the shared wall.
Example 2: Some puzzles in the maths olympiad seem intractable until you look at them differently.
Example 3: Water shortage has become an intractable issue in the town.
Fun Fact
At its heart is a Latin verb meaning to pull or handle, so the word really says cannot be handled. The same family of words gave us the machine that pulls a plough.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
One word in this sentence is misspelt. Find it:
After several patient attempts, the plumbers admitted that the leak behind the kitchen wall was an intracable problem.
a) intracable
b) patient
c) attempts
d) admitted
Show answer
a) intracable. The word keeps a t right after the c; say it and you can hear the stop.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the letters in the sentence and choose the word:
My uncle describes the traffic at the old bridge as an netcrbltaia headache for the town.
a) inexcusable
b) inevitable
c) intolerable
d) intractable
Show answer
d) intractable. A c and an r are needed; no other option has both.
Word Connection
Choose the antonym of the word intractable as used in the sentence:
The team spent months on an intractable fault in the school's new website.
a) simple
b) knotty
c) thorny
d) stubborn
Show answer
a) simple. A fault cleared up in five minutes would be no trouble at all.
Spell-o-Spell
Read the list. Choose the meaning of the one word spelt correctly:
1. recalcitrent 2. unyeilding 3. conundrem 4. intractable
a) not bending or giving way at all
b) a puzzling question or problem
c) refusing to obey those in charge
d) defying every attempt to fix or manage it
Show answer
d) defying every attempt to fix or manage it. Unyielding has ie after the y, recalcitrant finishes in ant, and conundrum finishes in um.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. City planners call parking in the old market intractable. What does this suggest?
a) nobody has ever noticed it
b) years of efforts have not solved it
c) the market has plenty of spaces
d) a small sign will soon fix it
Show answer
b) years of efforts have not solved it
2. A stain that proved intractable would be one that did what?
a) vanished at the first rinse
b) showed only in bright light
c) stayed after every kind of wash
d) spread slowly over the cloth
Show answer
c) stayed after every kind of wash
