Amiable or amicable?
amiable is an adjective meaning “Friendly; kind; sweet; gracious”; amicable is an adjective meaning “Showing friendliness or goodwill”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) amicable is about as common as amiable.
What is the difference between amiable and amicable?
| amiable | amicable | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective | adjective |
| Meaning | Friendly; kind; sweet; gracious Of a pleasant and likeable nature; kind-hearted; easy to like | Showing friendliness or goodwill |
| Example | an amiable temper | They hoped to reach an amicable agreement |
| Pronunciation | /ˈeɪ.mi.ə.bəl/ /ˈæ.mi.ə.bəl/ | /ˈæ.mɪ.kə.bəl/ |
| In writing | about once in every 1 million words | about once in every 1 million words |
Sources: amiable and amicable in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of amiable and amicable
amiable
- 1
Friendly; kind; sweet; gracious
an amiable temper
- 2
Of a pleasant and likeable nature; kind-hearted; easy to like
an amiable person
amicable
- 1
Showing friendliness or goodwill
They hoped to reach an amicable agreement
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, amiable or amicable?
amiable appears about once in every 1 million words; amicable about once in every 1 million words.
amiable about once in every 1 million wordsamicable about once in every 1 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search amiable vs amicable?
“amiable vs amicable” is searched about 4,400 times a month on Google and 230 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“amicable vs amiable”, “amiable or amicable”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.