Giving and taking criticism

The twenty-fourth entry is acionável, and the English word that answers it leads two lives which sit oddly beside each other. The older one belongs to the courts. Something « actionable » is something a person can be sued over — « an actionable statement », « the remark was held to be actionable » — and for a long stretch of the language that was the whole of the meaning. The second life is recent and belongs to the office, where « actionable » describes advice a reader can act on: « actionable feedback », « make it actionable ». That is the sense this entry wants, and the sentence beside it says so, since a suggestion that names what to do on Monday is the opposite of a lawsuit. Nothing in the shape of the word chooses between the two, so the noun in front of it has to. Set « actionable » beside a statement, a remark or an article and a lawyer hears the first; set it beside advice, a plan or feedback and everybody hears the second. In Portuguese the courtroom sense stays with the verb, acionar alguém em tribunal, and leaves the adjective alone.