acceptability

This term describes a threshold of adequacy rather than a state of excellence. It is frequently used in professional, technical, or regulatory contexts to determine if a product, behavior, or proposal meets the minimum required standards to be approved or tolerated.

In linguistics, the term takes on a specialized meaning referring to the subjective judgment of native speakers. Here, it distinguishes between what is theoretically possible according to formal grammar rules and what actually sounds natural or "right" to a human speaker.