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pliant
in a sentence
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  • When my mother went to her sisters, they followed and established dominion over all our pliant cousins, hypnotized like minnows before the pike's mouth.   (source)
    pliant = easily influenced
  •   "Two days' delay," I said. "And three things within them."
      He nodded eagerly. "Anything." Now that I had lost, he was pliant. At least he was gracious in victory.   (source)
    pliant = agreeable, or easily influenced
  • He has a pliant nature.
    pliant = able to adjust readily to different conditions
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  • The jacket is pliant and wind resistant.
    pliant = yielding (soft and bendable)
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  • Perhaps the brain damage made her pliant, or the fact that she hadn't lived in New Pretty Town for long.†   (source)
  • So that the sentences are pliant as branches and can be read in more ways than one.†   (source)
  • She mentally urged the robotic limb to go soft, to be pliant, to be human, as she watched Kai lift the hand and kiss the back of it.†   (source)
  • But you're far easier to control than Amos—children, particularly male children, are so naturally pliant, aren't they?†   (source)
  • The creature's fingers were the size of bananas, but nowhere near as pliant.†   (source)
  • Danny came pliantly enough, but he did not hug her back.†   (source)
  • And with my words, Echo leaned into me: soft, pliant, broken.†   (source)
  • "Maybe," she said, buying time, knowing she shouldn't be too pliant.†   (source)
  • I knew I needed a pliant friend for my plan, someone I could load up with awful stories about Nick, someone who would become overly attached to me, someone who'd be easy to manipulate, who wouldn't think too hard about anything I said because she felt privileged to hear it.†   (source)
  • Almost against her will she felt herself go fluid and pliant, stretching upward to twine her arms around his neck the way that a sunflower twists toward light.†   (source)
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  • …the best she could, called on all the haughtiness she had been born with to calm her maddened heart, and went to meet the man with her sweet doe's gait, her head high, her eyes shining, her nose ready for battle, and grateful to her fate for the immense relief of going home, but not as pliant as he thought, of course, because she would be happy to leave with him, of course, but she was also determined to make him pay with her silence for the bitter suffering that had ended her life.†   (source)
  • But surely Leto will know whose hand directed the pliant doctor …. and knowing that will be a terrible thing.†   (source)
  • Or was she young and pliant enough that she would grow to accept this madness as the norm?†   (source)
  • I ler breath catches, and she melts into me, her body suddenly, intoxicatingly pliant.†   (source)
  • The punt cord had been drenched through with rain, pliant, slippery and fibrous.†   (source)
  • It was a tiny thing, designed to hold a child's play-pretties or a young girl's sewing, but shaped and fashioned after the manner of mountain baskets, and woven of stout white hickory withes shaved down to daintier size and pliancy by the old man's jack-knife.†   (source)
  • They made a crunch like a kid eating cereal on TV And how can you tell the difference between syringes and missiles if you've become so pliant, ready to half believe everything and to fix conviction in nothing?†   (source)
  • Neither Smith nor his exercise rider had raised a hand to him, but the colt had learned the lesson that would transform him from a rogue to a pliant, happy horse: He would never again be forced to do what he didn't want to do.†   (source)
  • But Claudia was leading her from the chair, and she was now pliant and shocked and white-faced, the green taffeta ballooning around the' small yellow silk dress.†   (source)
  • Though my daughter's bones and disposition were pliant, she wept piteously.†   (source)
  • It was a basket woven from pliant cottonwood branches, so that as the weight of the body inside shifted the coffin seemed to groan.†   (source)
  • The men needed pliancy in their women friends, and she couldn't bring herself to act coy or silly for their sakes.†   (source)
  • I could feel the adrenaline–adrenaline called into being by her fear–shoot through my limbs as I contemplated switching to a more pliant body.†   (source)
  • She had played the dutiful daughter, the blushing bride, the pliant wife.†   (source)
  • She looked at his pupils, at the three pliant, agile figures half stretched on canvas chairs in poses of relaxed contentment, dressed in slacks, windbreakers and open-collared shirts: John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjold.†   (source)
  • She looked… pliant.†   (source)
  • I see his posture as somehow broken, there's not his familiar pliancy and spring at a public appearance, his steely poise among the crowds, the drive pooled up in his fists, the huge voice, the miracle forcefulness.†   (source)
  • Some people think that a pliant Executive, who acts as the community or legislature seems to want, is good.†   (source)
  • What power in pliancy!†   (source)
  • She trembled in his irresistible bear hug, as pliantly feeble with relief as the stalk of a flower.†   (source)
  • There was a coil of strips in a bowl of water, pliant for weaving, and there was a partly finished blanket, its coiled twigs white as though freshly peeled.†   (source)
  • He could see passion and pliancy and acceptance.†   (source)
  • I put my hand on the point of her hip and could feel all at once the pliancy of it and the meagerness and the newness, too.†   (source)
  • She felt herself go pliant under his hands.†   (source)
  • He knew how relaxed, how pliant her body could be.†   (source)
  • He was firm, sure, but also just distracted enough to give them the room they needed, and just pliant enough to let himself be taken advantage of when the need arose.†   (source)
  • Flexing her fingers, Tally found that the gloves were soft and pliant, the palms worn pale from years of use.†   (source)
  • The mattress, explained a card next to the bed, was organic, made not with springs or foam but instead a new fiber that Mae found was both firmer and more pliant—superior to any bed she'd ever known.†   (source)
  • The luster of the cloth, streaming and shifting with her movements, made it look as if the light of the room she entered were her personal property, sensitively obedient to-the motions of her body, wrapping her in a sheet of radiance more luxurious than the texture of brocade, underscoring the pliant fragility of her figure, giving her an air of so natural an elegance that it could afford to be scornfully casual.†   (source)
  • He would be afraid to nominate candidates with no other merit than coming from the same State, or being a personal ally, or being so pliant that they will always agree with him.†   (source)
  • I wanted to go up after her, grab her in the branches and shake her, I was burning to drag her back down, tussle and overcome her, but then I could never bring myself to climb beyond that first large branch, not from the height, but somehow I could never abide the subtle sway of living limbs, stake anything on their pliant strength.†   (source)
  • The first swift cut at the sternum was for an instant strangely unbloody, and I could see the quivering heart and the pliant sacs of the lungs, still alive as the pig was for a few moments longer.†   (source)
  • Johnnie caught her breath and hugged the small pliant body to her breast, feeling with a mighty throb of fierce, mother-tenderness, the poor little ribs, yet cartilagenous; the delicate, soft frame for which God and nature demanded time, and chance to grow and strengthen.†   (source)
  • Had she lacked patience, pliancy and dissimulation?†   (source)
  • She had expected to find Lily headstrong, critical and "foreign"—for even Mrs. Peniston, though she occasionally went abroad, had the family dread of foreignness—but the girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more penetrating mind than her aunt's, might have been less reassuring than the open selfishness of youth.†   (source)
  • Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced; their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgement too unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them.†   (source)
  • She stopped in front of a small picture as if for the purpose of examining it; and there was something so young and free in her movement that her very pliancy seemed to mock at him.†   (source)
  • The head was shapely, and balanced upon a neck broad at the base, but of exceeding pliancy and grace.†   (source)
  • Jane, you please me, and you master me — you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart.†   (source)
  • Americans, rightly or wrongly, are commended for the ease with which they adapt themselves to foreign conditions; but Mr. Touchett had made of the very limits of his pliancy half the ground of his general success.†   (source)
  • *o [Footnote o: At this time Alexander Hamilton, who was one of the principal founders of the Constitution, ventured to express the following sentiments in "The Federalist," No.71:— "There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the Legislature, as its best recommendation.†   (source)
  • But he's very pliant and he never grows angry.†   (source)
  • He yearned suddenly to be back in bed with her, feeling her body warm and pliant to his.†   (source)
  • When he traveled about on his snowshoes, the new ground yielded under him like thin and pliant ice.†   (source)
  • And thank God he's a good pliant man and a Jew.†   (source)
  • I felt my partner's taut hips, her quick and pliant knees, and looking in her young and radiant face I owned to her that this was the first time in my life that I had ever really danced.†   (source)
  • He dropped comfortably into his pliant creaking chair and tilted back, casually scanning the warm pungent sheet.†   (source)
  • The tree, that had burnt foxy red in spring and in midsummer bent pliant leaves to the south wind, was now black as iron, and as bare.†   (source)
  • Once, in the cherry time, when Gant's great White Wax was loaded with its clusters, and the pliant and enduring boughs were dotted thickly by the neighbor children, Jews and Gentiles alike, who had been herded under the captaincy of Luke, and picked one quart of every four for their own, one of these whitehaired children had come doubtfully, mournfully, up the yard.†   (source)
  • Where the crust on the bread his mother bought was stiff and thick as card-board, this had a pliant yielding skin, thin as the thriftiest potato paring or the strip one unwound from a paper lead-pencil.†   (source)
  • There he sat—strong, neat little Indian with very black hair, and pliant bands.†   (source)
  • He was occupied in his cigar, and in holding back the pliant boughs.†   (source)
  • Her brain darted up and down; it grew pliant and strong.†   (source)
  • But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.†   (source)
  • I could resist St. John's wrath: I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness.†   (source)
  • What resistance can be offered by manners of so pliant a make that they have already often yielded?†   (source)
  • Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just as free from angles, her character just as pliant.†   (source)
  • Bertuccio!" cried he, striking a light hammer with a pliant handle on a small gong.†   (source)
  • He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant.†   (source)
  • She leaned back in his arms, supple, pliant with quivering life, and for the first time gave him wide-open level eyes, in which there were now no tears, no shyness, no fear, but a dark smouldering fire.†   (source)
  • Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side, in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner.†   (source)
  • "So then," he said—as Hans Castorp, exhausted from all these gymnastics, lay there a solid, unbroken cylinder, the pliant roll tucked behind his neck—"it could be five below now and it wouldn't matter."†   (source)
  • His face emerged, still with an air of innocence, from his straight and pliant coat, which looked as though conscious of having been led astray, in spite of itself, and plunged into surroundings of a detested splendour.†   (source)
  • It had two curved, shiny steel tines with extremely sharp points, between them a coiled segment of gold-inlaid ivory with tines of its own, which were more pliant or flexible to some degree and could be bent inward.†   (source)
  • Despite my desire to throw my arms about their pliant forms and to draw down towards me the starry locks that crowned their fragrant heads, we would pass them by without stopping, for my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since Swann's marriage, and, so as not to appear to be looking into his park, we would, instead of taking the road which ran beside its boundary and then climbed straight up to the open fields, choose another way, which led in the same direction, but…†   (source)
  • Hans Castorp's long, pliant footwear bore him in all directions: along the slope on the left in the direction of Clavadel or to the right on past Frauenkirch and Glaris, the shadowy ghost of the Amselfluh massif looming up out of the fog behind them; he also skied the valley of the Dischma and the hills rising behind the Berghof, in the direction of the wooded Seehorn, only the very tops of its two snow-clad peaks visible above the tree line, and toward the Drusatscha woods, behind…†   (source)
  • At the front on the right was a device like the dial on a clock for regulating the turntable's tempo, to its left, the lever that started and stopped it; at the rear on the left, however, was the sinuous, club-shaped nickel tube that had pliant, movable joints and ended in a flat, round sound-box equipped with a screw into which the needle was inserted.†   (source)
  • In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, Lucy could not persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Tom, who, she thought, with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid fulfilment of his wish about the Mill, must become pliant and flexible.†   (source)
  • Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.†   (source)
  • Despite the prohibitions of the trustees, these Georgians, like some of their descendants, proceeded to take the law into their own hands; and so pliant were the judges, and so flagrant the smuggling, and so earnest were the prayers of Whitefield, that by the middle of the eighteenth century all restrictions were swept away, and the slave-trade went merrily on for fifty years and more.†   (source)
  • 'Someone that I know, Trot,' my aunt pursued, after a pause, 'though of a very pliant disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of poor Baby.†   (source)
  • A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated, more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with.†   (source)
  • Suddenly darting on each other, they closed, and came to the earth, twisted together like twining serpents, in pliant and subtle folds.†   (source)
  • Indeed, nothing sheltered the travellers but the branches and leaves of plants, so pliant that they yielded to every current of air, and which a puff of wind a little stronger than common would have blown away.†   (source)
  • A movement of compunction, helped by those small indefinable influences which every personal relation exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a secret marriage, which was a blight on his life.†   (source)
  • Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the gallery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place.†   (source)
  • I knew as well, when I saw my mother's head lean down upon his shoulder, and her arm touch his neck — I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.†   (source)
  • It was as clear as possible that she was ready to be attached to Will and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had never had a tete-a-tete without her bringing away from it some new troublesome impression, and the last interview that Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on returning from Freshitt Hall, had for the first time been silent about having seen Will) had led to a scene which roused an angrier feeling against them both than he had ever known before.†   (source)
  • In the midlight of the room were two persons—a man resting in a chair high-backed, broad-armed, and lined with pliant cushions; and at his left, leaning against the back of the chair, a girl well forward into womanhood.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile Monte Cristo had rapidly taken off his great-coat, waistcoat, and shirt, and one might distinguish by the glimmering through the open panel that he wore a pliant tunic of steel mail, of which the last in France, where daggers are no longer dreaded, was worn by King Louis XVI.†   (source)
  • At instants of momentary wakefulness he mistook a bush for his associate sentinel; his head next sank upon his shoulder, which, in its turn, sought the support of the ground; and, finally, his whole person became relaxed and pliant, and the young man sank into a deep sleep, dreaming that he was a knight of ancient chivalry, holding his midnight vigils before the tent of a recaptured princess, whose favor he did not despair of gaining, by such a proof of devotion and watchfulness.†   (source)
  • He had not a pliant face, he had rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable.†   (source)
  • But as in carrying them into effect they become revealed and known, they are at once obstructed by those men whom he has around him, and he, being pliant, is diverted from them.†   (source)
  • Here he entered; into his chariot shafts he backed his racing team with golden manes, put on his golden mantle, took his whip of pliant gold, stepped up into his car, and rolled out on the waves.†   (source)
  • Besides the densely plated shield, he made a cuirass, brighter far than fire light, a massive helmet, measured for his temples, handsomely figured, with a crest of gold; then greaves of pliant tin.†   (source)
  • Its tendency is to conserve that which is established; to say the new thing, as nearly as possible, in the old way; to combat all that expansive gusto which made for its pliancy and resilience in the days of Shakespeare.†   (source)
  • Nor was her pliancy in the end effected by a less motive, than the fear of being chargeable with protracting the public calamities, and endangering the event of the contest.†   (source)
  • I fear that he will think ill of my pliancy or lightness, not considering the irresistible influence he brought to bear upon me.†   (source)
  • …thoughts; and so the counsels of the priest, who was a wise and kindly disposed man, prevailed with him, and by their means he and his partisans were pacified and tranquillised, and to prove it put up their swords again, inveighing against the pliancy of Quiteria rather than the craftiness of Basilio; Camacho maintaining that, if Quiteria as a maiden had such a love for Basilio, she would have loved him too as a married woman, and that he ought to thank heaven more for having taken her…†   (source)
  • There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best recommendation.†   (source)
  • But will not the House of Representatives be as much interested as the Senate in maintaining the government in its proper functions, and will they not therefore be unwilling to stake its existence or its reputation on the pliancy of the Senate?†   (source)
  • He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.†   (source)
  • …back that weapon!"
    So they mocked, but Odysseus, mastermind in action,
    once he'd handled the great bow and scanned every inch,
    then, like an expert singer skilled at lyre and song—
    who strains a string to a new peg with ease,
    making the pliant sheep-gut fast at either end—
    so with his virtuoso ease Odysseus strung his mighty bow.
    Quickly his right hand plucked the string to test its pitch
    and under his touch it sang out clear and sharp as a swallow's cry.
    Horror swept through…†   (source)
  • Ned Lambert said, raising in salute his pliant lath among the flickering arches.†   (source)
  • Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat.†   (source)
  • The result, in the case of the neo-Celts, is a dialect that stands incomparably above the tight English of the grammarians——a dialect so naïf, so pliant, so expressive, and, adeptly managed, so beautiful that even purists have begun to succumb to it, and it promises to leave lasting marks upon English style.†   (source)
  • Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition, Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs, And wonders within there yet.†   (source)
  • My mother look'd in delight and amazement at the stranger, She look'd at the freshness of her tall-borne face and full and pliant limbs, The more she look'd upon her she loved her, Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity, She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace, she cook'd food for her, She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and fondness.†   (source)
  • …of fatherhood, From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow's embrace in the night, From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms, From the cling of the trembling arm, From the bending curve and the clinch, From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing, From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling to leave, (Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,) From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews, From the night a moment I emerging…†   (source)
  • One on his youth and pliant limbs relies; One on his sinews and his giant size.†   (source)
  • This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline: But still the house affairs would draw her thence; Which ever as she could with haste despatch, She'd come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse; which I observing, Took once a pliant hour; and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively; I did consent; And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did…†   (source)
  • Not fiery coursers, in a chariot race, Invade the field with half so swift a pace; Not the fierce driver with more fury lends The sounding lash, and, ere the stroke descends, Low to the wheels his pliant body bends.†   (source)
  • Unhappy Dido little thought what guest, How dire a god, she drew so near her breast; But he, not mindless of his mother's pray'r, Works in the pliant bosom of the fair, And molds her heart anew, and blots her former care.†   (source)
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