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pliable
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

show 9 more with this conextual meaning
  • She wants to put someone in charge who is pliable and easily controlled.
    pliable = easily led or directed
  • She wants everyone to be pliable and easy to control.   (source)
  • It made her feel weak and pliable.   (source)
  • He'd told me a handful of vague stories about one girl who'd been so pliable he could hardly stand her and another who had tried to manipulate the process at every turn.   (source)
  • The recommendation was simple: get a pliable psychiatrist who would admit Salander to the children's psychiatric clinic.   (source)
  • The immature hosts are entirely pliable.   (source)
  • Then the Beggar King was dead, and it was to be the sister, a pliable young child queen who was on her way to Pentos with three new-hatched dragons.   (source)
  • She’s soft. Pliable. Gullible.   (source)
  • Have you considered trying another, more pliable host?   (source)
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show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • They treat PVC with phthalates to make it more pliable.
  • They soaked the leather to make it pliable.
    pliable = capable of being bent or molded
  • The dough becomes more pliable as you work it.
    pliable = capable of being bent and shaped
  • The problems were compliant, pliable; they yielded to my manipulations, forming into solutions, one after the other.   (source)
    pliable = able to be shaped
  • Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration.   (source)
    pliable = capable of being bent without breaking
  • His spongy skin, pliable limbs, dark fringed lashes—even his sighs make me think (how could they not?)
    of Maisie.   (source)
    pliable = easily bent
  • One of us must cross through the entryway every so often. This keeps it pliable, you see. The ingress point is a bit like a hole in fresh dough; if you don't poke a finger into it now and then the thing may just close up on its own.   (source)
    pliable = bendable
  • With a sharp-edged stone he scraped away every trace of fat and flesh from the skin, washed it in the creek, and for days, in his spare hours, rubbed and stretched it to make it soft and pliable.   (source)
  • I need to climb as high as possible, but the branch I'm aiming for is short and looks pliable. I put my foot on it, testing its strength. It bends, but holds.   (source)
    pliable = capable of being bent without breaking
  • I unwrapped one of the Starbursts, the orange one that tasted like St. Joseph children's aspirin, and kneaded the square with my thumbs until the taffy became pliable.   (source)
    pliable = soft and bendable
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show 8 more with this conextual meaning
  • The earth, muddy and pliable, sucks at her feet.   (source)
  • She opened another container, this one a pliable tube, and then squeezed out a line of thick, clear jelly onto her finger.   (source)
    pliable = bendable
  • The soil was damp and pliable.   (source)
    pliable = capable of being shaped without breaking
  • “Granny and the others will be so glad to see you,” I say, squeezing Soly and Iris’s shoulders. Soly is soft and pliable; Iris is hard as carved rock.   (source)
    pliable = bendable
  • I think of it as tough but pliable now, like a well-worn glove.   (source)
    pliable = easily bent
  • In Alan's room, as big as a formal dining room, one of the thin, pliable mattresses that had been hiding the rifles was now set up on the floor, covered neatly with a sheet and wool blanket.   (source)
    pliable = soft
  • Then he tried the sinew again and found it pliable.   (source)
    pliable = capable of being bent
  • It's soft and pliable inside the house, but hardens outside in the cold, so that things rattle in it.   (source)
    pliable = easily bent
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show 10 more examples with any meaning
  • Considering her appearance — her lucent skin, her look of pliability, her long ballerina's neck — people expected her to be graceful.†   (source)
  • The pliability of the sofa cushions felt all wrong; far more comfortable than twigs gouging his side and bugs biting, but in the forest he and the dogs had slept touching one another—if any of them moved, the others knew it at once.†   (source)
  • My good fortune, the fortune that saved my life, was that he was not only a young adult but a pliable young adult, an omega animal.†   (source)
  • He was wearing a white button-down shirt, faded Levi's with threadbare knees, pliable gold-framed spectacles that wrapped around his ears.†   (source)
  • "Natalie is extremely pliable, and that makes her my father's favorite, as I am too willful in his opinion.†   (source)
  • The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous.†   (source)
  • They loved the way wood, in Velutha's hands, seemed to soften and become as pliable as Plasticine.†   (source)
  • People are very pliable then.†   (source)
  • But Laurella turned away from these suggestions with the hopeless, pliable obstinacy of the weak.†   (source)
  • I've heard many characteristics ascribed to him, but 'pliable' has never been one of them.†   (source)
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  • He'd once been very popular, but his demanding ways were proving too much for many, even for some of the pliable fools who followed him diligently.†   (source)
  • Having ascertained that the first batch of scats was in a pliable condition, I donned the mask, placed a scat on a white enamel plate which I had borrowed from the cabin, and began dissecting it with forceps and scalpel.†   (source)
  • The making of a man, even when the raw material was as pliable as I, often seemed brutally hard without the help of a father to handle the rougher passages.†   (source)
  • Her body had a softness, a pliability, and a great warmth.†   (source)
  • But events have a way of beating us all into a more …. pliable frame of mind, sooner or later.†   (source)
  • My dad was a teacher; he was pliable and supportive and useless.†   (source)
  • He said that I was little more than a child, a poor motherless child and to all intents and purposes an orphan, cast out upon the world with nobody to teach me any better; and I'd had to work hard for my bread, from an early age, and was industry itself; and I was very ignorant and uneducated, and illiterate, and little better than a halfwit; and very soft and pliable, and easily imposed upon.†   (source)
  • It took centuries to still the fear in some pliable animals—domestication it's called—but most cannot get over their fear, and I doubt they ever will.†   (source)
  • …and also brown hair, that I am tall and also not above the average height, that I am well and decently dressed, that I robbed a dead woman to appear so, that I am brisk and smart about my work, that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper, that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station, that I am a good girl with a pliable nature and no harm is told of me, that I am cunning and devious, that I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot.†   (source)
  • She wraps an arm around me and pulls herself across the cushions so she's right up against me, warm and soft and pliable.†   (source)
  • If not really so docile and pliable, this was the hidden ball and surprise about me.†   (source)
  • Yet who shall say that even now 'the novel' (I give it inverted commas to mark my sense of the words' inadequacy), who shall say that even this most pliable of all forms is rightly shaped for her use?†   (source)
  • He spoke hurriedly, as though trying to mold a substance which was warm and pliable, but which might soon cool.†   (source)
  • They all loved her but they thought her the sweetest, most pliable of young women, deferential to her elders and without any opinions of her own.†   (source)
  • As a matter of fact, the main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda into them, that kitsch is more pliable to this end.†   (source)
  • She had taken her old box of half-used crayons left from school, laying them in a row in the sun until they melted to a pliable consistency, and then bending them into bright-colored rings or melting the ends with a match, sticking several together to make a bracelet.†   (source)
  • She was warm, eager, childish, pliable.†   (source)
  • He grewviolently angry and I quickly consented to stay, fearing that someone might turn me in for revenge, or to get me out of the way so that another and more pliable boy could have my place.†   (source)
  • But Scarlett intended to marry—and marry Ashley—and she was willing to appear demure, pliable and scatterbrained, if those were the qualities that attracted men.†   (source)
  • No doubt this had something to do with the fact that we were in a fashion adopted by Grandma Lausch in our earliest days; to please and reward whom I had been pliable and grateful-seeming, an adoptee.†   (source)
  • She is pliable, and I can be strong in my recommendations of him.†   (source)
  • I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable; isn't it my fault that I'm not pliable enough?"†   (source)
  • Mental and moral cowardice, as he now reiterated, inflamed or at least operated on by various lacks in Clyde's early life, plus new opportunities such as previously had never appeared to be within his grasp, had affected his "perhaps too pliable and sensual and impractical and dreamy mind."†   (source)
  • At the moment when she was about to judge him her cousin's voice had intervened, and, ever since, it was Miss Bartlett who had dominated; Miss Bartlett who, even now, could be heard sighing into a crack in the partition wall; Miss Bartlett, who had really been neither pliable nor humble nor inconsistent.†   (source)
  • Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • But she was more pliable under his hands than a mere companionship would have made her, owing to her unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and, through that lady's comparative helplessness, upon him.†   (source)
  • She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like the sinuous draperies she affected.†   (source)
  • With this collection of valuables, Monsieur Le Quoi had stepped behind a counter, and, with a wonderful pliability of temperament, had dropped into his assumed character as gracefully as he had ever moved in any other.†   (source)
  • She felt an immense need of some one to speak to, and she had never before seen any one who seemed so quick and pliable, so likely to understand everything.†   (source)
  • One afternoon in January, Mrs. Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adele, because she had a cold; and, as Adele seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how precious occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood, I accorded it, deeming that I did well in showing pliability on the point.†   (source)
  • Who could be much with so pliable and beautiful a creature, and not yield to her endearing influence?†   (source)
  • Whipcord was scarcely more rigid than his arms and legs, or, at need, more pliable; but the outlines of his person were rather too angular for the proportion that the eye most approves.†   (source)
  • 'You'll find him not so pliable as you calculate upon: and, though I'm hardly a judge, I think that's the worst motive you've given yet for being the wife of young Linton.'†   (source)
  • The leaves seemed so pliable and strong, that I examined them to see to what further use they might be put.†   (source)
  • He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack--yielding, but tough; though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away--jerk!†   (source)
  • The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar…†   (source)
  • And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more.†   (source)
  • The oars were loaded with lead in the handles, and near the point of balance hung to pliable thongs, making possible the delicate touch called feathering, but, at the same time, increasing the need of skill, since an eccentric wave might at any moment catch a heedless fellow and hurl him from his seat.†   (source)
  • …a time two officers entered and stopped, one on each side the door; after them slowly followed a most striking personage—an old man clad in a purple robe bordered with scarlet, and girt to his waist by a band of gold linked so fine that it was pliable as leather; the latchets of his shoes sparkled with precious stones; a narrow crown wrought in filigree shone outside a tarbooshe of softest crimson plush, which, encasing his head, fell down the neck and shoulders, leaving the throat and…†   (source)
  • This seemed a great achievement; but our work was by no means ended, nor could we venture to desist from it, until, while the material was soft and pliable, we had formed it into the shape we desired for the canoe.†   (source)
  • Habit had, however, so far altered the manners of this pliable person age, that he continued to serve the wood-chopper, who was in quest of some tobacco, while he related to his more gentle visitor the happy change that had taken place in the dispositions of his own countrymen.†   (source)
  • "Praise be God, I no fly down into the lake," returned the Frenchman, with a visage that was divided between pain, occasioned by a few large scratches that he had received in forcing his head through the crust, and the look of complaisance that seemed natural to his pliable features.†   (source)
  • In other words, the greater pliability and resourcefulness of American is a fault to be corrected by the English tendency to hold to that which is established.†   (source)
  • "Yes, there is," said I, "but not for this speculative philosophy, that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to his share.†   (source)
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