For the adjective meaning pleasant or attractive, writers from outside North America generally use likeable. Likable—without the first e—is the preferred spelling in U.S. English. In Canadian news publications that make their content available online (which aren’t always reliable for gauging actual Canadian usage), both spellings appear about equally often.





Both forms appear throughout the English-speaking world, however. In current British news publications, likable appears about once for every six instances of likeable. In American publications, where the word in either spelling is less common than it is elsewhere, it is spelled likeable about a third of the time.

Likeable appears to be the older the form. It enters the language by 1700, and examples of its use in early 18th-century British publications are easily found through historical Google Books searches. Most instances of likable that Google finds from this period are actually improperly scanned words like remarkable and suitable. Actual examples of likable become more common in mid-18th-century sources. The American preference for likable gains steam toward the end of that century and steadily becomes more pronounced up to the present.

Examples






Ngrams

This ngram graphs the use of likeable and likable in a large number of British texts published between 1800 and 2000: