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Pliable   /plˈaɪəbəl/   Listen
Pliable

adjective
1.
Susceptible to being led or directed.  Synonym: fictile.
2.
Capable of being shaped or bent or drawn out.  Synonyms: ductile, malleable, pliant, tensile, tractile.  "Malleable metals such as gold" , "They soaked the leather to made it pliable" , "Pliant molten glass" , "Made of highly tensile steel alloy"
3.
Able to adjust readily to different conditions.  Synonyms: elastic, flexible, pliant.  "A flexible personality" , "An elastic clause in a contract"
4.
Capable of being bent or flexed or twisted without breaking.  Synonyms: bendable, pliant, waxy.  "A pliant young tree"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pliable" Quotes from Famous Books



... very kind of you, Quintus," said Lentulus (who had quite made up his mind that if the young man could wait for what was a very tidy fortune, through sheer affection for Cornelia, he would be pliable enough in the political matter), "not to press me in this affair. Rest assured, neither you nor my niece will be the losers in the end. But there's one other thing I would like to ask you about. From what Calvus told ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... naturally hard and brittle, can be made soft by the application of a little warmth, so that it will take any shape you please. In the same way, by being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... change, for slight though it was, it worked magic, and the queen Atta was a queen no more, but a miniature, straddle-legged aeroplane, pushed into position, and overrun by a crowd of mechanics, putting the finishing touches, tightening the wires, oiling every pliable crevice. A Medium came along, tugged at a leg and the obliging little plane lifted it for inspection. For three minutes this kept up, and then the plane became a queen and moved restlessly. Without warning, as if some irresponsible mechanic had turned the primed propellers, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... earth was frozen solid. Attached to the hose was a sharp pointed iron pipe. This pipe was perforated in hundreds of places. When it was driven into the earth and the steam turned on, it thawed the flinty soil and rendered it pliable to the ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... Bianca, Faustina! It is a day's work to learn their names and titles. She wears a veil—to hide her satisfaction—a wreath of orange flowers, artificial, too, made of paper and paste and wire, symbols of innocence, of course, pliable and easily patched together. She looks down, lest the priest should see that her eyes are laughing. Her father is whispering words of comfort and encouragement into her ear. 'Mind your expression,' he is saying, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... a solid lump of hard opaque sugar. To prevent this candying, as it is called several agents are used, such as glucose, cream of tartar pyroligneous acid, vinegar &c., the action of which will cause the sugar to boil clear, be pliable while hot and transparent when cold. It is therefore necessary to use some lowering agent for all boilings intended for clear goods, such as ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company

... them, but their presence is like to interfere with my projects in my own family. My simple cousin of Orleans hath barely seen this damsel, and I venture to prophesy that the sight of her is like to make him less pliable in the matter of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... I had not softened. I was bitterly disappointed in her. She had been the formless, pliable clay, on which I purposed to prove my pet theories for development and culture. I had taken her as a perfectly fresh and untainted being, naively unconscious even, of the elements, either good or bad, of which her own nature was composed, waiting only for the hand of a wise and skillful ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... individual medicine, and his medicine is good or bad according to his success. If he finds a feather at wrong angle in his path, his medicine is bad for that day. The Indian fasts and dances and chants, using his mind, his spirit, and his body as pliable instruments in the making of his prayer. He finds in the veritable exhaustion of his body the spirit path made clear for his dreams, until the very stars seem as the eyes of the gods, and the sighing of the pines comes to him as the rustle of eagle wings to bear his spirit to loftier ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... indulged in no oratorical claptrap. His address was pure argument. Douglas's manner was one of excitement, and accompanied and emphasized by almost continuous bodily movement. His hands and his feet, and especially that pliable face of his, were all busy talking. He said sharp things, evidently for their immediate effect on his audience, and showed that he was not only master of all the arts of the practical stump orator, but was ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... on this chink being kept open. The windpipe is composed of a series of cartilaginous or gristly rings connected together by softer tissues. These rings are not entire, but are completed behind by soft tissues including muscle. It follows that this tube is pliable and extensible—a very important provision, especially when large movements of the neck are made, during vigorous exercise, and ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... of very difficult access among rocky mountains, where the troops can only pass in single file, and the climate is very moist and rainy. The inhabitants are armed with long lances, having stone heads about an ell long, which have two edges as sharp as razors, and they are defended by pliable shields which cover their whole bodies. They are extremely nimble, and give signals to each other by loud whistlings, which echo among the rocks with inconceivable shrillness. Their province is named Tiltepeque[2]; which, after its submission, was confided to the charge ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... face, ordinary in looks, neutral in opinions, thirty years of age, and a married man. By trade he was a gentleman's outfitter in the New North Road, and the competition of business squeezed out of him the little character that was left. In his hope of conciliating customers he had become cringing and pliable, until working ever in the same routine from day to day he seemed to have sunk into a soulless machine rather than a man. No great question had ever stirred him. At the end of this snug century, self-contained in his own narrow circle, it ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a central point of the east end of Sumatra, being about a hundred and twenty miles from the sea to the east, north, and west. The surface is undulating, with no mountains or even hills, and there is no rock, the soil being generally a red pliable clay. Numbers of small streams and rivers intersect the country, and it is pretty equally divided between open clearings and patches of forest, both virgin and second growth, with abundance of fruit trees; and there is no lack of paths to get about in any direction. Altogether it is ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... wonderful responsive vitality, to moisture and drought, cold and heat, electrical changes, hostile bacteria, the most virulent of poisons and the deadliest of gases, it is one of the real Wonders of the World. More beautiful than velvet, softer and more pliable than silk, more impervious than rubber, and more durable under exposure than steel, well-nigh as resistant to electric currents as glass, it is one of the toughest and most dangerproof substances in the three kingdoms of nature" (although, as this ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... sonorous in language. There is one great scene (between Antony and Ventidius) in his All for Love. And one, at least, of his comedies, the Spanish Friar, is skillfully constructed. But his nature was not pliable enough for the drama, and he acknowledged that, in writing for the stage, he "forced ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... accessible regions where the wilder Negritos live the breechcloth and saya are made of the inner bark of certain trees which is flayed until it becomes soft and pliable. ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... by this, to think that he was of a kind and pliable disposition; and seeing the wheels fortified, and the horses at rest, I felt more disposed to hold conversation with the man. "Who knows," I said to myself, "but that I may now make one new friend ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... perfect protection to a catcher. The entire mask is constructed of the best hardened wire, extra heavy padded with goat hair, and the padding faced with the best imported dogskin, which is impervious to perspiration, and always soft and pliable, each. $4.00 No. 2-0. SPALDING'S SPECIAL LEAGUE MASK, used by all leading professional catchers, extra heavy wire, well padded with goat hair, and the padding faced with the best imported dogskin, which is ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick

... night an heir was born to the line of the Bertrams of Ellangowan, one of the most ancient in Galloway, and as usual the New Place was full of company come from far and near to make merry over the event. Godfrey himself, a soft, good-natured, pliable man, welcomed Mannering (for that was the name of the young Oxford student), and set him forthwith to calculating the horoscope of the babe from the stars. This, Mannering, to whom astrology seemed no better than child's ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... brought sharply home to her. The first pen she took up was stiff and scratchy; the sound of it was like a challenge to the outer world to come and pass judgment upon her. She flung the pen to one side in nervous trepidation, and then she searched until she found one that was soft and pliable, and went whispering over the paper like ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... precept but by example. Rowland passed for a child of ordinary parts, and certainly, during his younger years, was an excellent imitation of a boy who had inherited nothing whatever that was to make life easy. He was passive, pliable, frank, extremely slow at his books, and inordinately fond of trout-fishing. His hair, a memento of his Dutch ancestry, was of the fairest shade of yellow, his complexion absurdly rosy, and his measurement around the waist, when he was about ten years old, quite ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... into it, he laid the hose carefully in a slide- covered groove in the edge of the door. The hose did not seem to be quite large enough to fill the groove, and the fellow took something soft and pliable from a pocket and ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Moon, who was a woman named Kabigat, sat out in the yard making a large copper pot. The copper was still soft and pliable like clay, and the woman squatted on the ground with the heavy pot against her knees while she patted and ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole

... nineteenth century, the settlers in the valley of Leatherwood Creek had opened the primeval forest to their fields of corn and tobacco on the fertile slopes and rich bottom-lands. The stream had its name from the bush growing on its banks, which with its tough and pliable bark served many uses of leather among the pioneers; they made parts of their harness with it, and the thongs which lifted their door-latches, or tied their shoes, or held their working clothes together. The name passed to the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... pliable to every new emergency—it may be, too pliable; and her system of justice ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... the body of the sentence between it out! Usually are for my purposes the bridges of the city long enough; when I but Potzl's writings study will I ride out and use the glorious endless imperial bridge. But this is a calumny; Potzl writes the prettiest German. Perhaps not so pliable as the mine, but in many details much better. Excuse you these ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... one matters to her but just you yourself. And she is simple (or at least appears to be); she hasn't that Now-I-am-going-to-be-charming manner that is so difficult to bear. It is such fun talking to her, for she is very—pliable I think is the word I want. Accustomed to converse with people who constantly pull one up short with an 'Ah, now I don't agree,' or 'There, I think you are quite wrong,' it is wonderfully soothing to discuss things with someone who has the air ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... sell those?" asked Bill, pointing toward the moccasins. The Indian regarded them thoughtfully, and again the toes wriggled comfortably beneath the pliable moose-skin covering. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... and dreaded the establishment of a Republic, his idea being that if peace was made then, the Empire could be continued in the person of the Prince Imperial who—, coming to the throne under German influences, would be pliable in his hands. These views found frequent expression in private, and in public too; I myself particularly remember the Chancellor's speaking thus most unguardedly at a dinner in Rheims. But he could not prevent ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... as even Fenelon himself could have been. They were men of irreproachable character, the majority religious by nature and scholarly by disposition, and they found in their new field scope for an increased piety and a more enlarged benevolence. Their infinitely pliable philosophy expanded amiably to suit the requirements of any and every sect. The Rev. W. H. Furness, of Philadelphia, though not thoroughly identified with the movement, yet, in several volumes published at that time, manifested ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the end of the bill. The tongue, for one-half of its length, is semi-horny and cleft in two, the two halves are laid flat against each other when at rest, but can be separated at the will of the bird and form a delicate pliable pair of forceps, most admirably adapted for picking out minute insects from amongst the stamens of the flowers. The woodpecker, which has a similar extensile mechanism for exserting its tongue to a great ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... places where the wind had had its moments of frolicksome humour, where it had made grim fun of its own massive and cumbersome and yet so pliable and elastic majesty. It had turned around and around, running with breathless speed, with its tongue lolling out, as it were, and probably yapping and snapping in mocking mimicry of a pup trying to catch its tail; and it had scooped out a spiral trough ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... of the barbaric vigor of the North with the delicate and infinitely pliable sensuousness of the South, the classic union of Strength and Desire, Chivalry was born. Leaping forth to light and power, a majestic creation, glittering in the knightly panoply, noble by its knightly vows, it stood resplendent against ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... twisting, swinging force that stormed down as though it would bend and coil the very ribs of the old stubborn hills. It sought to warm them with the stress of its own irresistible life-stream, to beat them into shape, and make pliable their obstinate resistance. Through all things the impulse poured and spread, like fire at ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... and for the moment threw the little casuist off the track. She carefully folded up the idea, and laid it away on the inner shelves of her mind till she could think more about it. Pliable as she was to all outward appearances, the child had her own still, interior world, where all her little notions and opinions stood up crisp and fresh, like flowers that grow in cool, shady places. If anybody too rudely assailed a thought or suggestion she put forth, she drew it ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... clasp'd each lovely arm, Lockless—so pliable from the pure gold That the hand stretch'd and shut it without harm, The limb which it adorn'd its only mould; So beautiful—its very shape would charm; And, clinging as if loath to lose its ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... but the probable whereabouts of Atzerott in Mongomery county obtained, and Major O'Bierne telegraphing there immediately, the desperate fellow was found and locked up. A man named Crangle who had succeeded Atzerott in Mrs. Wheeler's pliable affections, was arrested at once and put in jail. A number of disloyal people were indicated or "spotted" as in no wise angry at the President's taking off, and for all such a provost ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... his pliable rod bent into a bow, and the line running sharply here and there through the water, Nic was following a fish which had taken the bait with a rush deep down in ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... more loudly—and though his hair was quite grey his voice was not unpleasing—and sang a few phrases full of expression and with artistic delivery; and then, when the dogs barked too vehemently, he would spring up, and with his lute in his left-hand and a long pliable rattan in his right, he would rush into the court-yard, shout the names of the dogs, and raise his cane as if he would kill them; but he always took care not to hit them, only to beat on the pavement near ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... have nothing to do with these innovations. He left it all to his brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, who was more elastic and pliable than himself. With the Turk over the border, he could not exist without the goodwill of both parties; and he desired the vote of Lutheran electors to make him emperor. He had no Inquisition in one part of his dominions contradicting and condemning toleration in the rest. He was an earnest ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... The figure was drawn up at its full height. It had in truth a noble dignity of outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky—the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... rhinoceros—two black, or of a dark colour; and two of a whitish hue. The black is supposed to be of a wilder and more morose disposition than the white. It has a peculiar upper lip, which is capable of extension, and is extremely pliable, so that it can move it from side to side, and twist it round a stick. It in this way collects its food, and carries it to its mouth, making use of it somewhat as an elephant does his trunk. The black species are very fierce, and probably, next ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... based, we have no doubt, on utility. We must be candid enough to say, that we give up the argument as to the intrinsic beauty of this species of cap—truly we think it the very type of all that is slovenly; but for use, there is not a more comfortable, portable, pliable, buyable, and washable a commodity, than your—nightcap are we to say? no—than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... seems to be, that Nature is endeavoring to take a new departure in the American, and to produce a race more finely organized, more sensitive, more pliable, and of more nervous energy, than the races of Northern Europe; that this change of type involves some risk to health in the process, but promises greater results whenever the new type shall be established. I am confident that there has been within the last half-century a great improvement in the ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... three months. The band for the first four weeks should be made of plain flannel; after this period a knitted band with shoulder straps is the better article. All petticoats and skirts should be supported from the shoulders. Stockinet is a good material for diapers; it is soft, warm, and pliable. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... enthusiasm on Gordon's face as he followed Little over the hatch coaming, and Barry thrilled to see it. There was needed no better proof of the man's complete emancipation from the alcoholic curse that had made him a willing and pliable tool in Leyden's crooked schemes. For a moment the skipper watched the two men, not quite satisfied of their safety, ready in an instant to order them up or go after them himself, should they get into trouble. But he ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... deeply impressed, and he opened out his vain heart in divers ways. But I may not tell you of these—only what concerns yourself; the rest belongs to his honour. When he was in his most pliable mood, I grew deeply serious, and told him there was a danger which perhaps he did not see. Here was this English prisoner, who, they said abroad in the town, was dying. There was no doubt that the King would approve the sentence of death, and if it were duly and with some display ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... forced into activity any more than the adults. We held that a properly directed logical system of education, not confined to the use of a too limited range of means, could scarcely fail to bring the pliable mind of childhood to a voluntary and eager fulfilment of reasonably allotted duties. And experience justified our opinion. Our mode of instruction had to be such as would make school exceedingly attractive; but, when this had been achieved, our boys and girls learnt in half the time ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... very unfortunately for Flora, that her mother had in her employment a girl, whose pretty feminine face and easy pliable manners, had rendered her a great favourite in the family. Whenever Flora visited the Hall, Hannah had taken charge of the baby, on whom she lavished the most endearing epithets ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... of the firer must be comfortable. You may, at first, feel constrained or cramped in the different positions but by continued practice the muscles and joints will become so supple and pliable that you can easily assume the correct position. Each man who is trying for a high score should utilize all available time to this end. The following photographs illustrate the correct ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... in every way—Marian Lawrence is a hussy unless I'm mistaken and I usually am not—she has talent and she has cultivated her mind. She will have a fortune and would make an admirable wife in every way for an ambitious and gifted man. More pliable than Marian, too. You're as tyrannical and conceited as all your sex and would never get along with any woman who wasn't clever enough to pretend to be submissive while twisting you round her little ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... go with it; and we may be weeks before we can put our heads out of our hut. Besides, the skins will be useful. We shall want deer-skin shirts, trousers, and socks and caps; and the skin of these deer is softer and more pliable than that of the wapiti. I don't want to kill more than I can help, lad, for I hate taking life without there is a necessity for it, but we can do with a lot more skins before we ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... in Pax, "Poker'll do for one. He'd be a capital member. Long and thin as a literary c'racter ought to be, and pliable too. We could make a'most anything of him, except a fire-screen or a tablecloth. Then there's Big Jack—he's got strong ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... object was to induce them to promise a round bribe to the directors and a large sum of money to fill the exhausted French treasury, by way of purchasing forbearance. As Pickney and Marshall appeared less pliable than Gerry, Talleyrand finally obliged them to leave, after which he attempted, though still without success, to extract money, or at least the promise of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... be more unsteady than the waves, Quin; and as to wobbling, that would be an advantage, for a rigid raft in a rough sea would be more liable to be damaged than one that was pliable." ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... but they are more digestible, and consequently are better food than meat for persons of weak digestive organs and sedentary habits. They are both excellent for persons who think or write much. Fresh poultry may be known by its full bright eyes, pliable feet, and soft moist skin; the best is plump, fat, and nearly white, and the grain of the flesh is fine. The feet and neck of a young fowl are large in proportion to its size, and the tip of the breast-bone is soft, and easily bent between the fingers; a young cock, ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson

... of language; JOHNSON. 'It must have come by inspiration. A thousand, nay, a million of children could not invent a language. While the organs are pliable, there is not understanding enough to form a language; by the time that there is understanding enough, the organs are become stiff. We know that after a certain age we cannot learn to pronounce a new ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... fellows, and contracts and lays aside anger without reason, and is subject to change every hour. The beardless youth, his guardian being at length discharged, joys in horses, and dogs, and the verdure of the sunny Campus Martius; pliable as wax to the bent of vice, rough to advisers, a slow provider of useful things, prodigal of his money, high-spirited, and amorous, and hasty in deserting the objects of his passion. [After this,] our inclinations ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... Such pliable consciences, doubtless, are very convenient in cases of emergency. But as they relax when selfish ends are to be subserved, and retain their rigidity only when judging the conduct of others, the inference is, that the persons possessing them are either hypocritical, or else, as was acknowledged by ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... there is nothing that cannot be done with the human body. Sometimes it almost appears as if it were boneless, so well are people able by practice to make use of their limbs to accomplish feats which astonish ordinary persons whose limbs are less pliable. ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... together 14 feet in length, as the most useful; a fir root, and top of good sound lance wood, well painted, ringed and varnished, makes a neat and serviceable rod. For trolling, your top should be stiff and strong. For worm not so pliable as your fly top. ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland

... is the abundance of outward knowledge. In the pursuit of wealth, the ocean, the desert, the isles of the sea have been ransacked for commodities to gratify the desires of man, and, in order that nature may be pliable for the same purpose in the hands of the artisan, its laws have been studied with the greatest success; the bowels of the earth, the depths of the air, the prison of the arctic seas, have all been subject to the same strict scrutiny ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... out, but all of them had gone back again to remove their effects, with the exception of Tungku Long himself, who stood looking at the flames. He was armed with a rattan-work shield, and an ancient and very pliable native sword. As he stood gazing upwards, quite unaware that any trouble, other than that involved by the conflagration, was toward, To' Kaya rushed upon him and stabbed him with his spear in the ribs. For a long time they fought, Tungku Long lashing To' Kaya ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... smoothly until Pliable and Christian, (I and Jake), fell into the Slough of Despond. You know, in the book, Pliable and Christian are traveling together; they fall in the Slough of Despond; Pliable struggles and gets out. Christian, owing to the burden he carries on his back, flounders about and ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... at the department headquarters, or rather it has changed hands. Another Directory, more pliable, is installed in the place of the fugitive Directory. Of the thirty-six administrators who form the Council only twelve are present at the election. Of the nine elected only six consent to sit, while often only three are found at its sessions, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... The hips are covered evenly with flesh, the legs full and thick, the under line, or stomach line, parallel to the back line, and the neck full and short. The eye should be bright, the face short, the bones of fine texture, and the skin soft and pliable. ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... object of all their punishment was to break our wills and make us docile, pliable, and week-kneed like the Russians we had seen in the camps—poor, spiritless fellows who could ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... theological, doth not lay down strong and close demonstrations; he doth not make himself ready for the contest (as he is wont) like a wrestler, that he may take the firmer hold of his adversary and be sure of giving him the trip; but draws men on by more soft and pliable attacks, by ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... gorgeous rainbows and bright sunbeams instead of bark and earth. At that time the firmament had not been made, but these first beings possessed the elements for its production. Rainbows and sunbeams consisted of layers or films of material, textile or at least pliable in nature, and were carried about like a bundle of blankets. Two sheets of each of these materials were laid across the hut alternately, first the rainbows from north to south, then the sunbeams from east to west. According ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... months. The only remarkable alteration that had happened, was a shrinking of the muscular parts and eyes; but the hair and nails were in their original state, and still adhered firmly; and the several joints were quite pliable, or in that kind of relaxed state which happens to persons who faint suddenly. Such were Mr Anderson's remarks to me, who also told me, that on his enquiring into the method of effecting this preservation of their dead bodies, he had been informed, that, soon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... music. You were reminded of the measured English of an old and lovable book, just as you grew used to read in his face what he was to say, before the words had begun to flow. Never was there a face more quick to reflect the mind, more pliable to humour, more luminous at some stirring idea or deed, more indignant at the bare notion of a wrong inflicted, softer ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... cushion, pillow, feather bed, down, padding, wadding;foam. mollification; softening &c.v. V. render -soft &c. adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile[obs3], tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious[obs3], inelastic; aluminous[obs3]; remollient[obs3]. yielding &c. v.; flabby, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... too pliable for any great solace from his foot, but he was not disappointed; he had expected little, and his thoughts were elsewhere. Rising, he permitted his nose to follow his troubled eyes, with the result that it touched the rim of the last wafer ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... whole-wheat flour mix a large cup of must be very stiff, and rendered soft and pliable by thorough kneading and afterward pounding with a mallet for at least half an hour in the following manner: Pound the dough oat flat, and until of the same thickness throughout; dredge lightly with flour; double the dough over evenly and pound quickly around the outside, to fasten the edges ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... airing room, and pack up the leaves in baskets and remove them to the manufacturing room. Each manufacturer takes a basketful, and commences to beat them between the palms of his hands with a lateral motion, in order to soften and make them more pliable for working, and thus prevent them, when rolled, from breaking. This beating process continues for about an hour, and it may either consist of one or two processes; the Chinese sometimes finish the beating process at once; at others, they ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... removed from the whole interior of the skin and be replaced with pieces of cotton, dampened as before, and the whole skin wrapped in a cloth or shut in a close box until with some scraping and manipulation it becomes as pliable as when first removed. Any little lumps of dried muscle should be broken up and the edges of the opening cut, scraped and stretched out as they are very apt to wrinkle and curl up, thus reducing the size of ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... remarkable man. Calm in the breezes of life he was calm also in its tempests. This is a natural corollary. As a man faces the smaller matters of his life so he will face its crises. Each smallest act accomplished imprints its stamp upon the pliable mass we call character; our manner of handling each tiniest common-place of our routine helps mould its form; each fleeting thought ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... enjoying the beautiful sunshine and balmy air impregnated with the pungent odour of the ruins. And there, without thinking of anything in particular, without even phrasing inwardly about something, I dreamed of coats of mail as pliable as gloves, of shields of buffalo hide soaked with sweat, of closed visors through which shot bloodthirsty glances, of wild and desperate night attacks with torches that set fire to the walls, and hatchets that mutilated the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... and delight. No maiden of the city had ever charmed him more, and withal she seemed so innocent and young, so altogether pliable in his hands. His pulses beat high, his heart was inflamed, and passion came and sat ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... smelled of rain. All growing things seemed to have ceased living; the air was heavy and laden with a resinous, dreamy vapour—magnetic, intoxicating. Such a night plays havoc with some women. Under these stifled conditions she is no longer normal; she becomes weak, pliable—she no longer reasons; she craves excitement, deceit, misadventure, confession—quarrels—jealousy—love—stringing their nerves to a tension and breeding a certain melancholy; it tortures by its suppression; a flash of ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... busy with mere Constitutional work: wherein, unluckily, fellow-workmen are less pliable than, with one who has completed the Science of Polity, they ought to be. Courage, Sieyes nevertheless! Some twenty months of heroic travail, of contradiction from the stupid, and the Constitution shall be built; the top-stone of it brought out with shouting,—say rather, the top-paper, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... is invariable, though it is pliable in its application to all the different positions in which, in their succession, a ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... dutiful, pliable, tractable, complaisant, gentle, pliant, undecided, compliant, irresolute, submissive, wavering, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... centuries and centuries ago, and peopled our little country, they brought their weather with them. It has never changed. Like the Breton temperament, it is founded upon a rock—though I often wish it were a little more pliable and responsive. Changes are good sometimes. I am not of those who think what is must always be best. If I were in your Parliament—but you don't have ladies in your Parliament, though they seem to have a footing everywhere ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... ivory becomes soft, and losing its hardness, yields to the fingers, and gives way, just as Hymettian wax[41] grows soft in the sun, and being worked with the fingers is turned into many shapes, and becomes pliable by the very handling. While he is amazed, and is rejoicing, {though} with apprehension, and is fearing that he is deceived; the lover again and again touches the object of his desires with his hand. It is a {real} body; the veins throb, when touched ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... oftener the victims of the cobra than the white people, go about in the dark with naked feet, and it is not strange that they are bitten. He descended from the tree, and went to examine the game he had brought down. Cutting some pliable sticks, he dragged the serpents together, and passed a withe around them behind the hood, and started back for the rendezvous where they were to take the carriage. He was determined to convince Scott that he was not ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... guineas, and fifty pounds is not at all an uncommon price to pay, though the inferior kind may be had for two pounds. Those ordinarily worn by the gentlemen here cost from twenty to thirty pounds each, but they are so light, pliable, and elastic that they will wear for ever, wash like a pocket-handkerchief, do not get burnt by the sun, and can be rolled up and sat upon—in fact, ill-treated in any way you like—without fear of their breaking, tearing, or getting ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... takes a peculiar pleasure in arranging them in my vases. I think she stood a half-hour yesterday twining and bending those stems the way she wanted them to hang. They are so brittle that I snap the blossoms off, but in her hands they seem pliable enough." ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... coming Sabbath. Pearson's deep brown face and sunburned light hair gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth's profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia's plight grieved him through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and pliable. He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties and shoes, and was made dumb ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry

... way rapidly, and the crowd, always easily guided and pliable, followed its improvised leader with loud acclamations. Only one idea, only one wish, animated all these men: they wanted peace with France, lest Bonaparte might come to Vienna and lay their beautiful capital in ashes in the same manner ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... made them out of thin plates of gold and attached them in place by means of stitches through tiny holes bored in the metal. Gold is the most common metal in the Land of Oz and is used for many purposes because it is soft and pliable. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... to get the coiled rope. He experienced almost a shock when he touched it. It had looked harsh and coarse to the touch, of rough hemp fibre, but on picking it up, the coils in his hand seemed almost silky. Certainly they were more than usually pliable. Returning to the study, the boy put the rope beside Mr. Wicker's chair. The magician did not move, his feet still stretched comfortably towards the flames. His dark handsome face was dreamy and remote, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... and kissed her tenderly; "your iron man is the commonest clay, sordid, pliable; and your stem heroic Brutus is a shopkeeper: he is open to the gentle influences which sway the kindred souls of the men you and I buy our shoes, our tea, our gloves, our fish-kettles of: and these influences I think I ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... made.] But who would beleeue, that there were so much gossipine or cotton-wool in China; whereof such variety of clothes are made like vnto linnen; which we our selues do so often vse, and which also is conueied by sea into so many regions? Let vs now intreat of that earthen or pliable matter commonly called porcellan, which is pure white, and is to be esteemed the best stuffe of that kind in the whole world: whereof vessels of all kinds are very curiously framed. I say, it is the best earthen matter in all the world, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... construct a theory of the universe they commenced by postulating an arche—a first principle or element out of which, by a vital process, all else should be produced. "Accordingly, whatever seemed the most subtle or pliable, as well as universal element in the mass of the visible world, was marked as the seminal principle whose successive developments and transformations produced all the rest."[402] With this seminal principle the living, animating principle seems to have been associated—in some instances ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... preferable, though last may be justifiable. Being on the subject of words, I am reminded of obnoxious, which is applied in the strangest ways by different authors. It is true that the Roman writers used obnoxius in various senses; but it does not seem so pliable or smooth in English. Generally it is held to indicate disagreeable or inimical, though our dictionaries do not admit it to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... Alimentive a large skull because he doesn't need it for the housing of his proportionately small brain, but concentrates on giving him a big stomach fitted with "all modern conveniences." On the other hand, the head of the Cerebral is large because his brain is large. The skull which is pliable and unfinished at birth grows to conform to the size and shape of the brain as the glove takes on the shape of the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... corner of the wall by the fireplace. Then he got all the books he had with him, and placed them handy to throw at the vermin. Finally he lifted the rope of the alarm bell and placed the end of it on the table, fixing the extreme end under the lamp. As he handled it he could not help noticing how pliable it was, especially for so strong a rope, and one not in use. 'You could hang a man with it,' he thought to himself. When his preparations were made he looked around, and ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... Let the string also be encased in gold. I don't know how you will do it—that is a matter for your skill; but I wish the string to remain where it is, intact, within a gold covering. This casing should be pliable, so that the cross could hang, if necessary, round the neck of a person—as it used to hang. Do I ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... from ten to twenty days. Here they undergo a sweating process, which diffuses moisture equally throughout the contents of each box. This prevents some grapes from retaining undue moisture, and it also softens the stems and makes them pliable. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... find," she continued, "that Chris herself will need a firm hand—a very firm hand. Though so young, she is not, I fear, very pliable. I have known her do the most unheard-of things, chiefly, I must admit, from excess of spirits. They all suffer from that upon occasion. It is a most difficult ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... the part of society of a large number of habits of great social value. The human being, born into a world where there are many things to be learned both of natural law and human relations, is, as it were, fortunately born ignorant. He has instincts which are pliable enough to be modified into habits, and in consequence socially useful habits can be deliberately inculcated in the immature members of a society by their elders. The whole process of education is a utilization of man's prolonged period of infancy, for the deliberate acquisition of habits. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... hypertrophy; and this in exceptional instances may be so extensive that the integument hangs in folds. The enlargement of the follicles, natural folds and rugae gives rise to an uneven surface, but the skin remains soft and pliable. There is also increased pigmentation, the integument becoming ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... very young, very pretty, I might say beautiful—not like anything he had ever met before. Without training, but he thought at her pliable age it was so easy to remedy that." (The old lawyer shook his head with a groan but said nothing.) "She had never seen anything but the rough people about, and knew only their manners and ways. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... New College quadrangle, and were drilled in the Newe Parkes (the Parks of our day) to the number of four hundred, "in a very decent arraye, and it was delightsome to behold the forwardnesse of so many proper yonge gentlemen so intent, docile, and pliable to their business." Town and gown took opposite sides: the citizens were, most of them, ready to support the Parliament, or the King and Parliament, but not the King against the Parliament. Long ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... new shoes in about 2-1/2 inches of water for about five minutes until the leather is thoroughly pliable and moist; he should then walk for about an hour on a level surface, letting the shoes dry on his feet, to the irregularities of which the leather is thus molded in the same way as it was previously molded over the shoe last. On taking the shoes off a very little ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... how to smile. They look more or less benevolent, more or less pleased, more or less love-smitten; but they are not pliable or subtle enough to smile. A woman who is not sufficiently prudent to mask her features, gives away her soul in a smile. I have known women who revealed their whole ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... impotent regrets. For one thing, I made the keel too heavy; then, again, I used planks that were absurdly thick for the shell, though, of course, I was not aware of these things at the time. The wreck, of course, provided me with all the woodwork I required. In order to make the staves pliable, I soaked them in water for a week, and then heated them over a fire, afterwards bending them to the required shape. At the end of nine months of unremitting labour, to which, latterly, considerable anxiety—glorious hopes and sickening fears—was ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... adorn. The original house was once the home of Warren Hastings. Four delightful years of school life followed. It was a pleasure to me to find that there was no extra charge for birches. The implement that was used to conserve discipline was not made out of the pliable birch tree, but of a very solid piece of leather with some stiffening to it—I fancy of steel—called a "ferrula." This was applied to the palm of the hand, and not to where my old friend the birch found its billet. As the same ferrula not only lasted a long time without detriment ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... numbers of specimens of a black Buprestis (B. octoguttata) in the old stumps of pine-trees left standing in the ground, hard outside but soft within, where the wood is as pliable as tinder. In this yielding substance, which has a resinous aroma, the larvae spend their life. For the metamorphosis they leave the unctuous regions of the centre and penetrate the hard wood, where they hollow out oval recesses, slightly flattened, measuring ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... competent at any time to unmake them, and also therefore to devise all possible changes that fell short of unmaking them. This was the root of the fatal hypothesis of the dictator, or divinely commissioned lawgiver. External circumstance and human nature alike were passive and infinitely pliable; they were the material out of which the legislator was to devise conventions at pleasure, without apprehension as to their suitableness either to the conditions of society among which they were to work, or to the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... process of their production, he is said to have made a very good business of it for some time. A rich manufacturer of Chemnitz once gave him a large order to be delivered at the end of the year: the children, whose pliable fingers had already proved serviceable in this respect, had to work hard day and night, and in return the father promised them an exceptionally happy Christmas, as he expected to get a large sum of money. When the longed-for time ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... understand this. In order to convince himself that there was no deception in the matter, he shook hands with several of the people nearest to him, and found that they were cold and hard as iron; although, to all appearance, they were soft and pliable, and could evidently move about with ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... but it does not take much to make itself felt when the air is at a temperature of about -75deg.F., and when one is working with bare fingers. There were always some degrees of frost here. In order to keep the lashings pliable while they were being put on, they used a Primus lamp on a stone close to where they were working. I often admired their patience when I stood watching them; I have seen them more than once working barehanded by the hour together ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... her off—out of his ken. But if she were engaged deeply enough in the estate affairs she would surely come back. He knew her!—she hated to leave things unfinished. He was eager now to heap all kinds of responsibilities upon her. He would be meek and pliable; he would put no sort of obstacles in her way. She would have no excuse for giving him notice again. He would put up with all her silly Jingoism—if ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... military boot comes half-way up the calf of the leg and the trouser is tucked into its top. They are without laces and pull on to the foot like the American "rubber boot." They are made of heavy, undyed leather, singularly soft and pliable, and thoroughly waterproof. The soles are shod with hobnails, but the boot is not very heavy. We often noted dead Germans who were bootless, their footgear having been appropriated by some victorious Frenchman, who had left near-by ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... of hide, and gold ornaments in their ears. The men also wore a sort of skin cloak, which hung down to their knees, over a close tunic: the legs and feet were bare in both. Their sheep-skin mantles, sewed together with threads of sinew, and rendered soft and pliable by friction, sufficed for a garment by day and a blanket by night. These Bosjesmans exhibited a variety of the customs of their native country. Their whoops were sometimes so loud as to be startling, and they occasionally seemed to consider the attention of the spectators ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... disappear—he and the other ringleaders who were bold enough to come up here. Let us immure them in some strong, thick-walled prison, and while the other rioters are vainly tormenting their heavy skulls by trying to guess what has become of their leaders, we shall render the latter so pliable and tame by all kinds of tortures and threats of capital punishment, that when we finally set them free again, they will actually believe they are in our debt, and in their gratitude become willing tools in our hands to be used as we ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... more let go those following me, and seek other disciples; straighten my head and gaze with my full eyes; anoint my lips and cleanse my teeth; cover my shoulders and make bright my face, smooth my tongue and make it pliable. Thus, O excellently marked sir! fully drinking at the fountain of the water you give, I shall escape from the unfathomable depths. In the world nought is comparable to this, that which old men and Rishis have not known, that shall ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... that Madame Chevalier was not ordered to enter into the conspiracy against Paul (whose inconsistency and violence they foresaw would make his reign short), that she might have influenced the conspirators to fix upon a successor more pliable and less scrupulous, and who would have suffered the Cabinet of St. Cloud to dictate to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... placed over the visage to preserve it, above which was adjusted first a piece of linen and then a series of bands impregnated with resin, which increased the size of the head to twofold its ordinary bulk. The trunk and limbs were bound round with a first covering of some pliable soft stuff, warm to the touch. Coarsely powdered natron was scattered here and there over the body as an additional preservative. Packets placed between the legs, the arms and the hips, and in the eviscerated abdomen, contained the heart, spleen, the dried brain, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the beach the mother, matter worthy of note, And wattled a basket well, and chose a fish from the boat; And Tamatea the pliable shouldered the basket and went, And travelled, and sang as he travelled, a lad that was well content. Still the way of his going was round by the roaring coast, Where the ring of the reef is broke and the trades run riot the most. On his left, ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... grasped a great cloak of dark green velvet, soft and pliable as a skin of fur, threw it over her white bridal robes, and ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... book, if possible. Some of us once urged her to be on our side in a game at ball. She said she had never played, and could not play. We made her try, but soon found that she could not see the ball, so we put her out. She took all our proceedings with pliable indifference, and always seemed to need a previous resolution to say 'No' to anything. She used to go and stand under the trees in the play-ground, and say it was pleasanter. She endeavoured to explain this, pointing out the shadows, the peeps of sky, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... having lived as a nun for thirty-three years, and fourteen as Superior of Oirschot—her face was transfigured, and in spite of the cold of a winter when the Scheldt could be crossed in a carriage, her body remained soft and pliable; but it swelled. Surgeons examined it and opened it in the presence of witnesses. They expected to find the stomach filled with water, but scarcely half a pint was removed, and the body ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... PLI. At that Pliable began to be offended, and angerly said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill luck at our first setting out, what may we expect 'twixt this and our Journey's end? May I get out again with ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... care should be taken to keep the hose soft and pliable, and to prevent its being affected by mildew. After being used, in order to dry them equally they should be hung up by the centre, with the two ends hanging down, until half dry. They should then be taken down and rubbed over ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... wants in his dog are developed in pointers and setters, we know what we may expect of a descendant of one of the Academic Races. Other things being equal, he will take more naturally, more easily, to his books. His features will be more pliable, his voice will be more flexible, his whole nature more plastic than those of the youth with less favoring antecedents. The gift of genius is never to be reckoned upon beforehand, any more than a choice new variety of pear or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... you, My brethren: dried as I am with age, The tendrils of my heart are pliable; Nor have the tangles of this thicket-world So twisted all my grain as not to bend Before another's misery. Wherefore, I do beseech you, call ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... exercise or exposure to a high temperature. The office of the perspiration is two-fold. It removes noxious matter from the system, and diminishes animal heat, and thereby equalizes the temperature of the body. It also renders the skin soft and pliable, thus better adapting it to the movements of the muscles. The Sebaceous Glands, which are placed in the true skin, are less abundant where the sudoriferous glands are most numerous, and vice versa. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... accounts, which are eloquent with information about the creators of all this mimic pomp. About six sous a day was the wage earned by a painter, while the plumbers received eight. These latter were called upon to coax pliable lead into all sorts of shapes, often more ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... cordially and thoroughly in the project, finding horses, arms, and money, to the amount of 1500 pounds. If the Church approved, "the prerogative of the laity was to listen and to obey." Francis Tresham proved less pliable. He at once inquired if the Roman Catholic peers were to be warned, so as to keep away from Parliament on the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... will if you squeeze them a bit. Arrangements are extraordinary pliable things if you handle them firmly, and we'd like to have you. A speech from you about the General would be most interesting. It would stimulate the ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... wretched hovels at Terra del Fuego, and in some respects they are inferior even to them. At Botany Bay, where they were best, they were just high enough for a man to sit upright in; but not large enough for him to extend himself in his whole length in any direction: They are built with pliable rods about as thick as a man's finger, in the form of an oven, by sticking the two ends into the ground, and then covering them with palm-leaves, and broad pieces of bark: The door is nothing but a large hole at one ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr



Words linked to "Pliable" :   pliability, flexile, susceptible, tractile, adaptable, formed



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