winnability

English edit

Alternative forms edit

winability

Etymology edit

win +‎ -ability

Noun edit

winnability (uncountable)

The quality of being winnable; the possibility that one can win at all.
- 1993, Rodger Van Allen, Being Catholic: Commonweal from the Seventies to the Nineties, page 24:
  Commonweal was troubled that Bush and other strategists were "toying" not only with survival after nuclear war but with the "winnability" of such a war.
- 2012, Allen R. Wells, The Winter Count, page 99:
  The belief in winnability led to a Soviet Union intention to install missiles in Cuba.
- 2018, Tanja Mitrovic, Bing Xue, Xiaodong Li, AI 2018: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, page 47:
  Weak winnability says that every player has a chance to win. Strong winnability says that every player has a chance to win no matter which initial state the game starts from.
The likelihood of winning (something).
- 2012, Marie Weil, Michael S. Reisch, Mary L. Ohmer, The Handbook of Community Practice, page 251:
  Alinsky suggested that two closely related criteria, the winnability and the nondiviseness of an issue, should determine the focus of organizers' work.
- 2014, John Campbell -, Roy Jenkins:
  Seats were becoming vacant, but boundaries had been redrawn, making it hard to assess the winnability of the new constituencies.
- 2015, M. Finn -, The Gove Legacy: Education in Britain after the Coalition:
  The perception that Gove had alienated the teaching profession to the extent that it was having an impact on the 'winnability' of marginal seats meant that he had become toxic to his party's election prospects; many who thought he should go admired his efforts to change schooling and also that his reforms were much needed and did not go far enought.
The chance that (a political candidate) can win; electability.
- 2000, Swarn Lata Sharma, Gender discrimination and human rights, page 201:
  This is despite the fact that women candidates have greater winnability compared to the male candidates, as is evident from Table 3.
- 2010, Kate Zernike, Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America:
  “Winnability is emphasized,” she said. “There's something to that. At the same time, if someone is completely against what the policies of the party are, in good conscience, you can't support someone like that.”
- 2014, Alex Marland, Matthew Kerby, First among Unequals:
  They awarded high marks for Williams' “winnability,” his communications, and his fiscal frameworks.