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Ductile   Listen
adjective
Ductile  adj.  
1.
Easily led; tractable; complying; yielding to motives, persuasion, or instruction; as, a ductile people. "Forms their ductile minds To human virtues."
2.
Capable of being elongated or drawn out, as into wire or threads. "Gold... is the softest and most ductile of all metals."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ductile" Quotes from Famous Books



... when the fracture is fresh, have all a drawn out look; that the very air bubbles in them, which are often very numerous, are all drawn out likewise, long and oval, like the air-bubbles in some ductile lavas. ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... grave, held forth at the end of the scissors the ripped-up ruins of a small-sized indiarubber hot-water bottle, a ductile vessel that, buttoned inside the khaki tunic, had adapted itself not uncomfortably to the still existing rotundities of the Alderman's figure. A hyaena-yell of laughter broke from each of the crowding heads. Brooker's face assumed ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... too, that I like to go into one of these big glass hives, or rather glass-making hives, and see the workmen at their "chairs" blowing and moulding the hot ductile glass into its appointed form and patterns; and I like also to see the curling wreaths of smoke ascend and disappear through the orifice at the top of the dome. And when I look at this I wonder how that huge chimney is cleaned, and where the Titanic sweep is that could undertake such a gigantic ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... overdoing his bronchitis with an eye to port; of the return match with Coldingham, and his belief that their left-hand bowler only wanted "hitting"; of the new edition of hymn-books, and the slackness of the upper village in attending church—five households less honest and ductile than the rest, a foreign look about them, dark people, un-English. In thinking of these things he forgot what he wanted to forget; but hearing the sound of wheels, he entered a field as though to examine the crops until ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... offer to us honorable Terms— that he made a Merit of it. And yet he now comes with Terms disgraceful to human Nature. If he is a good kind of Man, as these Letters import, I am mistaken if he is not weak & ductile. He has always voted, as I am told in favor of the Kings Measures in Parliament, and at the same time professd himself a Friend to the Liberties of America! He seems to me, either never to have had any good ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... in the shade of night the goddess lies, Yet to the learn'd unveils her dark disguise, But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes. Now she unfolds the faint and dawning strife Of infant atoms kindling into life; How ductile matter new meanders takes, And slender trains of twisting fibres makes; And how the viscous seeks a closer tone, By just degrees to harden into bone; While the more loose flow from the vital urn, And in full tides of purple streams return; How lambent flames from ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... friends to soothe—pleasures to beguile—a world to divert and dissipate their griefs. What are the sorrows of the young? Their growing minds soon close above the wound—their elastic spirits soon rise beneath the pressure—their green and ductile affections soon twine round new objects. But the sorrows of the poor, who have no outward appliances to soothe—the sorrows of the aged, with whom life at best is but a wintry day, and who can look for no after-growth of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... to my observation, what a wide field of sentiment and reflection is opened to me! Few minds are industrious and ductile enough completely to compass this field, if the infant is only accidentally brought under their view. But, if it is an infant with which I begin to be acquainted to-day, and my acquaintance with which shall not ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... most noted of the moderns we beg to introduce our readers to Mr. Rogerson, an enthusiast and a martyr. He, as may be presumed, was educated at that University where the rudiments of palatic science are the most thoroughly impressed on the ductile organs of youth. His father, a gentleman of Gloucestershire, sent him abroad to make the grand tour, upon which journey, says our informant, young Rogerson attended to nothing but the various modes of cookery, and methods of eating and drinking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various

... his work. He wanted to deal in something more masculine than lace and ribbons. He read a sentimental article on Iron in the 'Journal of Commerce': how Iron held the world together; how it was nerve and sinew; how it was ductile and malleable and other things that sounded big; how without Iron civilization would stop, and New Zealanders hunt rats among the ruins of London; how anybody who would make two tons of Iron grow where one grew before was a benefactor to the human race greater than Alexander, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... taking and holding the fine handle that so invitingly offered itself, led the ductile youth, by that mastertool of his, as she stept backward towards the bed; which he joyfully gave way to, under the incitations of instinct, and palpably delivered up to ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... creep the lowly earth, Echo thy being with reflected birth— Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound: The universe, that rolls this globe around, Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides, And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides. The lightnings are thy ministers of ire; The double-forked and ever-living fire; In thy unconquerable hands they glow, And at the flash all nature quakes below. Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation draw To one immense, inevitable law: And, with ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... possess'd: (The fame of Greece and her assembled host Had reach'd that monarch on the Cyprian coast; 'Twas then, the friendship of the chief to gain, This glorious gift he sent, nor sent in vain:) Ten rows of azure steel the work infold, Twice ten of tin, and twelve of ductile gold; Three glittering dragons to the gorget rise, Whose imitated scales against the skies Reflected various light, and arching bow'd, Like colour'd rainbows o'er a showery cloud (Jove's wondrous bow, of three celestial dies, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... used for several reasons; first, because electricity travels through a copper wire more easily than through iron, and second, for the reason that copper is more ductile than iron, and can be drawn into a wire ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... the human mind is despised; it depends, but too frequently, upon bigotted, superstitious priests, who are interested in deceiving man, and who are sometimes impostors; or else upon parents or masters without understanding, who are devoid of morals, who impress on the ductile mind of their scholars those vices with which they are themselves tormented; who transmit to them the false opinions, which they believe they have an interest in making ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... the Servia is nearly 45 feet as compared with that of the Great Eastern of 60 feet. This makes the Servia, proportionately, the deepest ship of all. All three vessels are built of steel. This metal was chosen not only because of its greater strength as against iron, but also because it is more ductile and the advantage of less weight is gained, as will be seen when it is mentioned that the Servia, if built of iron, would have weighed 620 tons more than she does of steel, and would have entailed the drawback ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... These alloys were quite ductile, very hard, very tenacious, and capable of receiving a beautiful polish; their color varies from white to rose color, according to the respective proportions of the two bodies; they are particularly interesting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... genius make the most ductile husbands. A fool has too much opinion of his own dear self, and too little of women's to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... symbols of it. The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon. To him, the refractory world is ductile and flexible; he invests dust and stones with humanity, and makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world. Shakspeare ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of the jurists, taking up and sorting the threads of thought when a tangle seemed imminent, and presenting the result in some striking pattern. We watch his methodizing spirit at work on the cumbrous legal phraseology, hammering it out into clear, ductile French. We feel the unerring sagacity, which acted as a political and social touchstone, testing, approving, or rejecting multifarious details drawn from old French law or from the customs of the Revolution; and finally we wonder at the architectural ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... any single cause, adds to their number, and intensifies their power. It limits and lowers her action very much, as man is limited and degraded by dissipation. The saddest part of it all is, that this neglect of herself in girlhood, when her organization is ductile and impressible, breeds the germs of diseases that in later life yield torturing or fatal maladies. Every physician's note-book affords copious illustrations of these statements. The number of them which the writer ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... are, briefly, two materials—Clay, and Stone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. Indeed, the true use of gold in this world is only as a very pretty and very ductile clay, which you can spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you like, and which will neither crack ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... Wax: a ductile substance excreted by bees and other insects from glandular structures in various parts of the body, used in building cells or ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... with originality, and giving the value of wit and poetry to the worthless and the dry. Pity that this brilliant 'quid nunc' should degenerate into a mere trifling 'arbiter elegantiarum,' and expend his buoyant and ductile genius in the indictment of ephemeral paragraphs. His genius, it is true, has little solidity; but if he would rest two or three years on his oars, he might collect the scatterings of wit and poetry, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... sovereigns of Shakespeare's time was Henry IV of France, unquestionably the greatest of French kings, despite the fact that the primacy has often been accorded to the Roi Soleil, Louis XIV. The powerful and ductile personality that was able to put an end to the destructive religious wars of France and to lay a firm foundation for the strongly-centralized power of a later time, a foundation which the great statesman Richelieu broadened ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... made in the same manner in which silver pencil-cases and thimbles are made. If you take a thin piece of silver, or of any ductile material, and lay it over a concave mould, you can readily imagine that you can make the thin, ductile material take the shape of any mould into which you put it; and you may go on forcing it into moulds of different depths, till at last the plate of silver will have been shaped into a cylindrical ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... denying the promises of colour and eventfulness a Plutocracy holds out, and though they do not attract me, I can quite understand their appeal to the more ductile and appreciative mind of Mr. Mallock. But there are countervailing considerations. There is, it is said, a tendency in Plutocracies either to become unprogressive, unenterprising and stagnantly autocratic, or to develop states of stress and discontent, and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... instruct her tongue to bear your message; Teach every grace to smile in your behalf, And her deluded eyes to gloat for you; His ductile reason will be wound about, Be led and turn'd again, say and unsay, Receive the yoke, and ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potent than the rest: the power of gold. Even iron yields to the more ductile metal. The importance of municipalities, enriched by trade, begins to be felt. Commerce, the mother of Netherland freedom, and, eventually, its destroyer—even as in all human history the vivifying becomes afterwards the dissolving principle—commerce ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... artist with the little brain joined us also, and a thick bunch of lean porter-insects swayed and struggled under the multitude of conveniences that were considered essential to my state. I was carried in a litter during the final stage of our journey. This litter was made of some very ductile metal that looked dark to me, meshed and woven, and with bars of paler metal, and about me as I advanced there grouped itself a long ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... abstractions over which Odo had formerly languished, infusing a passionate meaning into the formulas of the textbooks. His discourse breathed the same spirit, and had his religion been warmed by imagination or tempered by charity the child had been a ductile substance in his hands; but the shadow of the Council of Trent still hung over the Church in Savoy, making its approach almost as sombre and forbidding as that of the Calvinist heresy. As it was, the fascination that drew ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes, and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave—let him merge in the general ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... must be carefully balanced; frequently, however, the degree of probability attained is so great that our assent is almost equivalent to complete certainty. No one doubts,—although it is impossible for him to "know,"—that Caesar conquered Pompey, that gold is ductile in Australia as elsewhere, that iron will sink to-morrow as well as to-day. Thus opinion supplements the lack of certain knowledge, and serves as a guide for belief and action, wherever the general lot of mankind or individual circumstances ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... continue to bury you in copy as if you were my private secretary. Well, I am not unconscious of it all; but I think least said is often best, generally best; gratitude is a tedious sentiment, it's not ductile, not dramatic. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Ductile" :   malleable, manipulable, pliant, pliable, tensile, tractable



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