Answerable means being responsible for your actions and required to explain or justify them to someone else. When you're answerable to your parents for your behavior at school, you need to tell them what happened and accept the consequences. When a coach is answerable to the team's owner, she must explain her decisions about which players to start or which strategies to use.

Being answerable creates a relationship where one person has authority to ask questions and expect honest answers. A student is answerable to their teacher for completing homework. A babysitter is answerable to parents for keeping their children safe. Company executives are answerable to shareholders for how they spend money.

The word carries weight because you're accountable: your answers matter and have real consequences. If something goes wrong on your group project, each team member should be answerable for their part. You can't just shrug and walk away.

Sometimes answerable simply means “able to be answered,” as in “That's an answerable question” versus one that's impossible to solve. But most often, it describes that important connection between responsibility and explanation, between action and consequence.