/səˈsɛptɪbəl/
[adjective] Easily affected, harmed, or influenced by something. If you are susceptible to something, it means you are likely to be affected by it more than other people.
The Latin root of 'susceptible' literally means 'to take up from underneath' — as if something reaches up and grabs you before you can resist.
The story of 'susceptible' begins in ancient Rome, with the Latin verb 'suscipere', meaning 'to take up', 'to receive', or 'to undertake'. This verb was built from two parts: 'sub', meaning 'under' or 'from below', and 'capere', meaning 'to take' or 'to seize'. Together, they painted a vivid picture of something being lifted up and caught — grabbed from beneath before you even noticed the hand reaching for you. It is a deeply physical image hiding inside what we now treat as a purely abstract word.
From 'suscipere', Latin formed the past participle 'susceptus', meaning 'taken up' or 'received'. Adding the suffix '-ibilis', which indicated possibility or capacity, gave Medieval Latin 'susceptibilis' — literally meaning 'capable of being taken up' or 'able to receive'. This form passed into Late Latin scholarly and theological writing, where it was used to describe things that were capable of being affected or changed by outside forces. Medieval philosophers found it especially useful when discussing the capacity of the human soul to receive impressions, virtues, or sins.
The word arrived in English in the early 17th century, most likely borrowed directly from Medieval Latin 'susceptibilis', with possible influence from French 'susceptible', which had developed along a parallel path. French had inherited the Latin root through its normal sound changes, and English writers of the period were drawing freely from both French and Latin sources. The earliest English uses kept close to the philosophical sense of being 'capable of receiving or admitting' something — a surface susceptible to scratching, a mind susceptible to learning.
Over the 17th and 18th centuries, the word gradually shifted in tone. Where it had once sounded neutral — simply meaning 'able to receive' — it began to carry a hint of vulnerability, even weakness. To be susceptible was no longer just to be open to influence; it was to be dangerously open, to be at risk. By the 19th century, writers were using it most often in contexts of illness, emotional fragility, and moral danger. A person susceptible to cold, to flattery, to temptation — the word had quietly acquired a shadow it never quite shakes off.
The root 'capere' — 'to take' or 'to seize' — is one of the most productive roots in the entire English language. From Latin 'capere' came 'captura', giving us 'capture'; 'capax' gave us 'capacious' and 'capacity'; 'concipere' (con + capere, 'to take together') gave us 'conceive' and 'concept'; 'percipere' (per + capere, 'to take through') gave Latin 'perceptio', which became English 'perception'. Even the word 'accept' traces back here, through Latin 'acceptare' (a form of 'ad + capere', 'to take to oneself'). Susceptible, then, is part of a vast family of English words, all descended from that same Roman idea of reaching out and seizing something.