Word.ws English Dictionary

popeable

popeable adjective: thought to be among those likely to be elected pope; papabile; papable.

Adjective

popeable (comparative more popeable, superlative most popeable)

  1. (rare) Thought to be among those likely to be elected pope; papabile; papable.
    • Vatican watchers have already anointed the Honduran prelate papabile or “popeable.”2001 February 20, May Ying Welsh, “Latin Cardinals hint at Church's future”, in CNN
    • In 2020, Edward Pentin, the senior Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Register, released a book on the topic, titled "The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates." In the book, Pentin listed 19 cardinals he considered to be papabile, or "popeable" frontrunners.2025 April 21, Sam Clancy, Andrew Weil, “Former St. Louis archbishop Burke among 'popeable' candidates after Francis' death”, in KSDK

Forms of popeable

comparativemore popeable
superlativemost popeable

Origin of popeable

Calque of Italian papabile, equivalent to pope + -able.

Questions about popeable

What does popeable mean?
Popeable means thought to be among those likely to be elected pope; papabile; papable.
What part of speech is popeable?
Popeable is an adjective.

Words near popeable in the dictionary

  1. pope's head
  2. pope's living room
  3. pope's nose
  4. Pope's pear
  5. pope-holy
  6. popeable
  7. Popean
  8. poped
  9. popedom
  10. popedoms
  11. popehead

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: popeable (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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