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I am coding a program and want to raise a signal whenever the data of a form is in a state that allows it to be committed to a storage.

signal committabilityChanged();

However, I don't find the word committability in the dictionaries I checked. Is committability a word? Else, what is the noun form of “committable”?

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This isn't an English usage question but a computer-speak question. Why not ask a computer programmer? I vote to close. – Bill Franke Jan 4 at 13:04
Not every possibility of allowable prefix and suffix combinations is in any dictionary. Your word seems correctly constructed to me. – Mitch Jan 4 at 13:07
@BillFranke i am using the english language in my computer program's code. how is it then not an english usage question? – Johannes Schaub - litb Jan 4 at 13:13
Only programmers know the answer, not linguists or usage mavens. It's professional jargon, not English. I know a lot of biomedical jargon (that's my field) that looks like English but isn't: strictly professional jargon and no English usage expert or linguist without knowledge of the jargon would be able to answer questions about correct usage. Even biomed pros in one specialty don't know how to use the jargon of other specialties. That's what makes it not English. – Bill Franke Jan 4 at 13:18
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This question should stay open. It does not run afoul of the prohibition of questions about "Naming, including naming programming variables/classes", which has to do with questions that essentially ask "what should I name this variable" and are therefore much too subjective and open-ended. This question asks about a word's established noun form. The OP and others have done the research to show that this is also not a general reference question. – MετάEd Jan 5 at 19:00
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5 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

This Google ngram suggests that both committability and commitability are used, with the former being preferred over the latter. Their usage appears to be quite rare and specialised. Initially, committability seems to have been used primarily in the field of psychiatry. Later years show its increasing usage in computer books as evidenced here.

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And who reads computer books for fun? Certainly not literary types. – Bill Franke Jan 4 at 13:31
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@BillFranke According to psychiatrists, those who don't are the ones who tend to satisfy most of the criteria for committability :) – coleopterist Jan 4 at 13:44
Yes, absolutely. Those who don't succeed can be committed. That is understandable English. I know what it means to be committed. One of my former girlfriends was committed for slashing her wrists. I was young and not in the biomed field then, but the word was a normal English word. – Bill Franke Jan 4 at 13:52
In any case, I'm just expressing my insignificant opinion about a the appropriateness of a question for EL&U. The Q doesn't need defending unless at least four other users here agree with me. I doubt that that will happen. Methinks the programmer doth protest too much! (8-O – Bill Franke Jan 4 at 13:58
up vote 3 down vote

"Committable" was listed in the 1913 Webster's dictionary as an adjective. There's no reason to assume that the noun form of this word, "committability," meaning "the quality of being committable" or "suitability to be committed," is invalid or grammatically incorrect.

For comparison see "commutable" and "commutability."

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up vote 1 down vote

My first thought was to use "commissible"/"commissibility", which is also not a word. "Committable"/"commitability" sounds fine, though.

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up vote 0 down vote

The term commitability is has already been defined and applied in respect of transactions in literature in related fields. See for example,

...the semantics of the commit operation. The commitability predicate plays an important role in defining the preconditions for this operation. A transaction t1 is allowed to commit if all transactions t2 that it depends on causally have committed, or are trying to commit. ...
Formal Methods for Open Object-Based Distributed Systems IV By Scott F. Smith, Carolyn L. Talcott

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up vote -1 down vote

Maybe you are looking for the noun commitment.

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That's a noun representing something actually being committed, not something being able to be committed. – Joe Z. Jan 4 at 16:32
No, the question is not looking for that. And this is a comment and not an answer, you should convert it. – Kris Jan 6 at 12:45

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