Capable of being arrested or stopped; describing a crime serious enough that police can make an arrest.
From arrest (from Old French arrester, from Latin ad- 'to' + restare 'to stop') plus the suffix -able meaning 'capable of being.' The word formed as legal systems needed to distinguish between arrestable and non-arrestable offenses.
In British law, 'arrestable offence' was an official category—but the UK actually abolished this distinction in 2006, showing how laws and the words we use for them evolve over time.
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