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Adaptable   /ədˈæptəbəl/   Listen
Adaptable

adjective
1.
Capable of adapting (of becoming or being made suitable) to a particular situation or use.  "The frame was adaptable to cloth bolts of different widths"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Adaptable" Quotes from Famous Books



... said the colonel, who was adaptable, and who saw at once that Jarvis was a man of high character. "It's cool on the river and that coffee will warm one up ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... real life is neither very romantic nor fastidious. She is cheerful, adaptable, too fond of pleasure to be thoughtful, and has a decided inclination towards married life. Its material advantages and status attract her—and, for the rest, she has a vague confidence that everything will come ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... get permission to visit M.'s cavalry division that I might observe the French peasantry. I went to give lectures to the men. I did that, faithfully exerting myself to the uttermost, but I did it very badly. I suppose I am not adaptable. Certainly the conditions under which I lectured destroyed any faint chance of my succeeding, before ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... course of society. But after the turmoil of the fourth century had subsided, when governments began again to approach more nearly to peace and consequently to justice, and public life once more to be attractive to decent men, both philosophies showed themselves adaptable to the needs of prosperity as well as adversity. Many kings and great Roman governors professed Stoicism. It held before them the ideal of universal Brotherhood, and of duty to the 'Great Society of Gods and Men'; it enabled them to work, indifferent ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... has been transformed into one huge camp of wounded. All adaptable buildings—halls, cafes, school-rooms—have been rapidly commandeered for hospitals. Sometimes there are beds, more often rudely made straw mattresses, for little Servia, worn out by two hard wars, is ill-equipped to resist ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... her capacity for hatred had increased and also her dangerous qualities, and she would have found all this because God had so ordered life that it is adaptable, making the defensive and offensive qualities of the being capable of increase or decrease in answer to environment ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... almost every merit and hardly a fault, becomes what it is by a process very different from that of most writers careful of form. Read Chateaubriand, Gautier, even Baudelaire, and you will find that the aim of these writers has been to construct a style which shall be adaptable to every occasion, but without structural change; the cadence is always the same. The most exquisite word-painting of Gautier can be translated rhythm for rhythm into English, without difficulty; once you have mastered ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... emotion and no other means to ecstasy has served man so well. In art any flood of spiritual exaltation finds a channel ready to nurse and lead it: and when art fails it is for lack of emotion, not for lack of formal adaptability. There never was a religion so adaptable and catholic as art. And now that the young movement begins to cast about for a home in which to preserve itself and live, what more natural than that it should turn to the one religion of ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... this series is to give the most convenient laboratory methods for preparing various substances in one-half to five pound lots, an attempt has also been made to have these processes as far as possible adaptable to large scale development. For example, extractions have been avoided wherever possible, cheap solvents have been sub-stituted for expensive ones, and mechanical agitation, a procedure extremely important in the success of many commercial processes, has ...
— Organic Syntheses • James Bryant Conant

... corner of his eye quite approvingly at times. He was a widower—a good little man, devoted to his three charming children. They took an immense fancy to me, and I really think I could have got on with him. I am very adaptable, as you know. But it was not to be. He got out of his depth one morning, and unfortunately there was no one within distance but myself who could swim. I knew what the result would be. You remember Labiche's comedy, Les Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon? Of course, every man hates having ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... Black Country; but it calls itself Sedgehill High Street as it passes through the place, and so identifies itself with its environment, after the manner of caterpillars and polar bears and other similarly wise and adaptable beings. At the point where this road adopts the pseudonym of the High Street, close by Sedgehill Church, a lane branches off from it at right angles, and runs down a steep slope until it comes to a place ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... evolution philosophy it is argued that "inheritable characters peculiar to one sex show a tendency to be inherited chiefly or solely by that sex in the offspring."[1134] Women are said to be mentally more adaptable.[1135] This is shown in their tact, which is regarded as a product of their desire to adapt themselves to the stronger sex, with whose muscular strength they cannot cope. If a woman should resist her husband she would provoke him, and her life would be endangered. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... simpler and more primitive qualities on which all good art is built. At the height of that movement line drawing went out of fashion, and charcoal, and an awful thing called a stump, took the place of the point in the schools. Charcoal is a beautiful medium in a dexterous hand, but is more adaptable to mass than to line drawing. The less said about the stump the better, although I believe it still lingers on ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... not-quite-extinct. Man ruled this section of the galaxy, and someday if he didn't kill himself off in the process he'd rule all of it. He wasn't the smartest race but he was the hungriest, the fiercest, the most adaptable, and the most unrelenting. Qualities which, by the way, were exactly the ones needed ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone

... widely used in American libraries. In this, the classes are each indicated by a single letter, followed by numbers representing divisions by countries, and these in turn by letters indicating sub-divisions by subjects, etc. It is claimed that this method is not a rigid unchangeable system, but adaptable in a high degree, and capable of modification to suit the special wants of any library. In it the whole range of literature and science is divided into several grand classes, which, with their sub-classes, are indicated by the twenty-six letters of ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... feature of 1918. With it will come an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace when ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... work when they are placed, set courses of study cannot be followed without endangering the practical value of the teaching. Furthermore, the pupils must be advanced as they show ability, and their different characteristics should have consideration; hence the work must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to allow for increasing one kind of training and decreasing another, in order to develop a girl's best ability. It is not the trade courses only which should be fitted to the need, but the trade-art, trade-academic, and physical education must also shift and introduce needed material ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... Twinkleton, in this stage of her existence, 'Foolish Mr. Porters') revealed a homage of the heart, whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic state of existence, is as ignorant as a granite pillar. Miss Twinkleton's companion in both states of existence, and equally adaptable to either, is one Mrs. Tisher: a deferential widow with a weak back, a chronic sigh, and a suppressed voice, who looks after the young ladies' wardrobes, and leads them to infer that she has seen ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... and light pair of breeches, to which we may add light pockets. His heart soon became somewhat heavier when he discovered that his captain was a tyrant, whose chief joy appeared to consist in making other people miserable. Bill Bowls's nature, however was adaptable, so that although his spirits were a little subdued, they were not crushed. He was wont to console himself, and his comrades, with the remark that this state of things couldn't last for ever, that the voyage would come to an end some time or other, and that men should never say die ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... in deep searching of heart and had caught a vision of what the war would mean, and the opportunity that would be presented to an organization that was interdenominational, international, readily mobile, and adaptable enough instantly to ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... there is no waste of material while the cell is not in use. This important feature, and the fact that the internal resistance is low, make this cell well adapted for all forms of heavy open-circuit work. The fact that there is no polarizing action within the cell makes it further adaptable to heavy ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... putting herself in his place. Her imagination is more likely to be over-active than too sluggish. One of the most popular classes of the "Society for the Encouragement of Study at Home" is that devoted to imaginary travels in Europe. She is wonderfully adaptable, and makes herself at ease in an entirely strange milieu almost before the transition is complete. Both M. Blouet and M. Bourget notice this, and claim that it is a quality she shares with the Frenchwoman. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... and crossing which had proved so successful for the Spanish cultivators in the West Indies, the initial efforts were rewarding. The new plant (Nicotiana tabacum) proved easily naturalized and adaptable to ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... word with a meaning easily adaptable to all sorts of explanations; but if there were no bounds and no end to this explaining by suggestion, we might as well rub out from our suggested slate of life, with a suggested sponge, the whole beautiful world of clear and eternal realities. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... singleminded Brand, Parsifal, or Don Quixote. If the selves are too unrelated, we distrust the man; if they are too inflexibly on one track we find him arid, stubborn, or eccentric. In the repertory of characters, meager for the isolated and the self-sufficient, highly varied for the adaptable, there is a whole range of selves, from that one at the top which we should wish God to see, to those at the bottom that we ourselves do not dare to see. There may be octaves for the family,—father, Jehovah, tyrant,—husband, proprietor, male,—lover, lecher,—for ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... this kind should be suited to the wants of graded and ungraded schools, there evidently being nothing in the one not readily adaptable to ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.

... WEATHER BOARDING.—John Nester, Portland, Oregon.—This invention relates to a new scribe hook for weather-boards, which will be generally useful and adaptable to the purposes for which it is intended and to provide ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... the cakes I could bear stoically enough if they would leave my tea alone, or rather if they would allow me a reasonable amount of sugar for it. However, we are an adaptable people and there are ways in which even the sugar paper-dish menace can be met. My own plan, here offered freely to all my fellow-sufferers, provides an admirable epitome of War and Peace. The sugar allowance being about half what it ought to be, I take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... her adaptable nature, was beginning to get used to conventional observances, and, followed by the other three, she entered the drawing-room, and went straight to her Grandmother. "We had a very pleasant drive, thank you," she said, and her pretty, graceful manner ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells

... high esteem by mankind. From remote ages man has endeavored, by careful culture, to produce larger, tenderer, and sweeter varieties. Of an adaptable character, under careful treatment the plant has evolved in a docile fashion, and has ended by giving us what the ambition of the gardener desired. To-day we have gone far beyond the yield of the Varrons ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... there some, like himself, drawn from the smaller towns of the South. Others in the company were the relics of the old days of negro minstrelsy, and still others recruited from the church choirs in the large cities. Silas was an adaptable fellow, but it seemed a little hard to fall in with the ways of his new associates. Most of them seemed as far away from him in their knowledge of worldly things as had the waiters at the Springs a few years before. He was half afraid of the chorus girls, because they seemed such ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... the breeding is given the credit. Our men are highly specialized, and once outside the walls of Berlin they will find things so different that this very specialization will prove a handicap. The mongrel peoples are more adaptable. Our workmen and soldiers are large in physique, but dwarfed of intellect. The enemy will beat us in open war, and, even if we should be victorious in war, we could not rule them. Either we solve this food business or we all turn soldiers ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... and play with your hoop," suggested her brother. "I can't see that as an insuperable difficulty, Father. Tariffs could be made adaptable, relative to the common interest as well as to the individual one. We could ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... adaptable a creature is man. I had not been a fortnight in my new position when I felt myself quite at home, as though Dublin and the West of Ireland had been my natural habitat. Belfast and the County Down receded into the past; and shall I confess it? much as I had liked the ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... courage in his bearing. The liquor he had drunk brought the colour to his lips. They were now hot and red, and his eyes had a singular feverish brilliancy, in keeping with the hectic flush on his cheek. He had dismissed the subject of his illness almost immediately, and Christine's adaptable nature had instantly responded to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of needlework were done upon white satin, and this makes them easily adaptable to any light scheme of colour, where they may appear indeed as guests of honour—invited from the past to be courted by the present. It is not often that such pieces are offered as parts of a scheme of modern decoration, and the fingers of to-day ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... is fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in Bengal an endless supply of this adaptable building material. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... you were more adaptable," Joan retorted. "You have more preconceived notions than any man I ever met. Why in the name of common sense, in the name of . . . fair play, can't you get it into your head that I am different from the women you have known, ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... greatest. From this sense it gets knowledge, unattainable by birds which cannot employ their feet as hands. The elephant is the most sagacious of quadrupeds—its tactual range and skill, and the consequent multiplication of experiences, which it owes to its wonderfully adaptable trunk, being the basis of its sagacity. Feline animals, for a similar cause, are more sagacious than hoofed animals,—atonement being to some extent made in the case of the horse, by the possession of sensitive prehensile lips. In the Primates the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... "Lavengro," of Borrow's earliest journeyings and adventures; truly in his case adventures were to the adventurous. Having had all the wild experiences just outlined, small wonder that the strange lad was not very adaptable when, as a free scholar, he came under the rule of the Rev. Edward Valpy at Norwich ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... But as bears were adaptable creatures and the dispossessed tenant would find quarters elsewhere, he settled himself back to further rest and contemplation. The lair under the ledge was really a better place than he had at first thought it. The leaves were so ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... adaptable animal. If we are to colonize the planets of the Solar System, we must meet the conditions on those ...
— The Man Who Hated Mars • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Even worse, abstract terms, which from century to century have become more abstract and therefore further removed from experience, more difficult to understand, less adaptable and more deceptive, especially in all that relates to human life and society. Here, due to the growth of government, to the multiplication of services, to the entanglement of interests, the object, indefinitely enlarged and complex, now eludes our grasp. Our vague, incomplete, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... metaphysical distinctions, and catastrophes. In his opinion the bulk of mankind was not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst they were really happy. But perhaps his political optimism depended most on his belief that institutions, as living things, were indefinitely adaptable, and that the logic of life and progress naturally overcame all opposing arguments. In his ideal state there was room for many mansions, and he did not speak of disaster when American colonists proposed to build according to designs not ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... aphoristic style, their moralizing and their psychology, were all greatly admired. They were believed by the Elizabethans to have been acted, and their murders and violence seemed to warrant such action on the modern stage; though the Elizabethans found less adaptable their use of the chorus, the restriction of the number of persons speaking, their long monologues, and the limitation of the action to the last phase of a story. Kyd modeled his rhetoric on Seneca ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... long-settled farmers who have got into a groove—even a profitable one—and who do not care to bother greatly with progressive ideas. The new comer has no preconceived notions, and comes with an open mind adaptable to ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs

... the white community; but lest some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn with some legal prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts itself readily to circumstances; and being thus adaptable, there is always ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... visited with one another. Except that it was hills where the old country was flat, it was much like Holland, and the people, keen and thrifty, had preserved their national customs even unto the third and fourth generations. Robert understood them as he understood the Hodenosaunce, and, with his adaptable temperament, and with his mind that could understand so readily the minds of others, he was able to meet them on common ground. As they rode into the city he looked questioningly at Willet, and the hunter, understanding the ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... all intimacy, kept in check by self-respect and well-bred dignity. Madame de Vallorbes was enchanted with the reserve of her own demeanour. Let it be well understood that she was the least importunate, the least exacting, the most adaptable, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... twenty-five, a conception of her own self which was imposed upon her neither by her traditions—she has none; nor by the instructions of her parents—they never gave her any; nor even by her own nature—for it is characteristic of these easily "adaptable" minds that their first instincts are chaotic and undetermined. They are like a blank check, which the will undertakes to fill out. But whatever the will writes upon it, is written in letters that will never be effaced. Action, action, always action,—this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... a readily adaptable time of life, and William Bannister, after a few days of blank astonishment, varied by open mutiny, had accepted the change in his surroundings and daily existence with admirable philosophy. His memory was not far-reaching, and, as ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... with the advantage of having compared the painting with others in the Royal Academy. The landscape recalls that glimpse of halcyon country of which we caught sight in The Infant Academy—its trees, its glowing sky, are equally adaptable to both subjects. The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1843, and was then the property of Sir James Cockburn, Bart., ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... class, Uncle Laurence, and fortunately I am not in bondage to luxurious ease," Bessie said. "But I will not be perverse. Changes come without seeking, and I am of an adaptable disposition. The other day I was supposed to be a great heiress—to-day I have no more than ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... Paris; he has been, as it were, bewildered ever since his arrival. You will tell me that you also come straight from the country, but that does not matter. Well brought up as you are, a southerner, alert and adaptable, you will quickly pick up the routine of the Boulevard. For the rest, I myself undertake your education from that point of view. In a few weeks you will find yourself, I answer for it, as much at home in Paris as ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... improved she is! That's like all the Americans—they're so adaptable,'—Miss Manisty would think, as she watched her nephew in the evenings teasing, sparring, or arguing with Lucy Foster—she so adorably young and fresh, the new and graceful lines of the coiffure ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... belong to his. That was the second time I heard Tom swear. He wanted to know what kind of a snob I thought he was. He'd be as much at home with dad on the ranch as he was in London. "The fault is with you," he said. "You 're not adaptable, and ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... it—keeps me awake at night. The doctors tell me that's what has knocked my digestion out—being so infernally jealous of her.—I can't eat a mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added suddenly, pushing back his plate with a clouded countenance; and Lily, unfailingly adaptable, accorded her radiant attention to his prolonged denunciation of other people's cooks, with a supplementary tirade on the toxic qualities of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... well; Bjornson and Henry James have analyzed character psychologically in their short-stories; Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for the conveyance of specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if not all, of the literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use, and has incorporated them in ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... that Edison has had in mind for his battery is transportation of freight and passengers by truck, automobile, and street-car. The greatly increased capacity in proportion to weight of the Edison cell makes it particularly adaptable for this class of work on account of the much greater radius of travel that is possible by its use. The latter point of advantage is the one that appeals most to the automobilist, as he is thus enabled to travel, it is asserted, more than three times farther than ever before on ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... jusseris, ibit,—or the other way either,—it is all one, so anything is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least a hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... or repel house flies fill a certain need in connection with the house-fly problem. No very satisfactory repellent substances for this insect have been found which are at the same time adaptable to general use about the home, or places where foods are handled. Extracts of pyrethrum flowers are now generally available commercially, and these give fairly good results in the destruction of house flies in buildings. Most of the sprays of pyrethrum ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp

... that hundreds of families of wealth and refinement, whose circumstances enabled them to select a home where they pleased, lingered here, apparently well satisfied with their surroundings. We are, indeed, the children of habit, and singularly adaptable. It is, perhaps, best that it should be so, but I thought, as I brushed off the thin layer of soot with which the Wheeling cloud of enterprise had discolored the pure white deck of my little craft, that if this was civilization and enterprise, I should rather ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... many cases it really is a band and it does make music. It is hard at it for the whole of the evening, with no break for refreshment unless there be a sketch in the bill. There are, too, the matinees and the rehearsal every Monday at noon. The boys must be expert performers, and adaptable to any emergency. Often when a number cannot turn up, a deputy has to be called in by 'phone. The band seldom knows what the deputy will sing; there is no opportunity for rehearsal; and sometimes they have not even an idea of the nature of the turn ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... human nature is undoubtedly the most plastic part of the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his susceptibility ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... cease to prize them, and who never failed to punch him up. Beaton being what he was, Fulkerson was his creditor as well as patron; and Fulkerson being what he was, had an enthusiastic patience with the elusive, facile, adaptable, unpractical nature of Beaton. He was very proud of his art- letters, as he called them; but then Fulkerson was proud of everything he secured for his syndicate. The fact that he had secured it gave it value; he felt as if he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... admirable. However the men may long to return, they accept none the less heroically the vicissitudes of the situation. Their courage, infinitely less 'literary' than mine, is so much the more practical and adaptable; but each bird has its cry, and mine has never been a war-cry. I am happy to have felt myself responsive to all these blows, and my hope lies in the thought that they will have forged my soul. Also I place confidence in God and whatever He holds in ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... examinations should not conform in any perfunctory or red-tape manner to a literally construed course of study. The course of study is a means and not an end, and should be, at all points and times, elastic and adaptable. To make pupils fit the course of study instead of making the course of study fit the pupils is the old method of the Procrustean bed—if the person is not long enough for it he is stretched; if too long, a piece ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... inspired by some vital import, not simply, like Sigurd the Volsung, by archaeological import. Lucretius is a good deal more suggestive than Dante; for Dante's form is too exactly suited to his own peculiar genius and his own peculiar time to be adaptable. But the method of Lucretius is eminently adaptable. That amazing image of the sublime mind of Lucretius is exactly the kind of lofty symbolism that the continuation of epic purpose now seems to require—a subjective symbolism. I believe Wordsworth felt ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... adaptable," she continued. "It does not seem to matter into what nation they marry, they seem to assimilate and fit into their places. When this little thing is a duchess, you will see she will fulfil the position to a tee. Berty will be very lucky if he ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... and Hans Marais, now become inseparable comrades, cleared and levelled the ground under a mimosa-bush, and, spreading their kaross thereon, lay down to sleep. George Dally, being an adaptable man, looked at the old campaigners for a few minutes, and then imitated their example. Little Jerry Goldboy, being naturally a nervous creature, and having his imagination filled with snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, etcetera, would fain have ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... changes in living and government which enabled them to make the most of their surroundings and opportunities, and to advance while others stood still. Far more than other Greeks, the people of Attica were imaginative, original, versatile, adaptable, progressive, endowed with rare mental ability, keenly sensitive to beauty in nature and art, and possessed of a wonderful sense of proportion and a capacity for moderation in all things. Only on such an assumption can we account for ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... difficult to interest "hurry-up" Americans in planting trees for future generations. They want results now. But the sooner we develop reliable and adaptable fruiting trees for general planting, the sooner will thousands of people begin to plant trees. The late rapid growth of membership in this Association shows an awakened interest that could be swollen into a mighty flood of tree planters if good trees were available. If there ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... heard it drop a perfect minor third? But what a strange, strange wife for Roger, of all men! I suppose she is the first thoroughly unconventional person he was ever closely connected with—in one way you would seem more natural with her—I suppose because you are more adaptable than Roger. With him, everybody must adapt. Will she! Voila l'affaire! I should say that the young woman would be likely to have great influence over other people's lives, herself. If she and Roger ever clash—! Ah, well, advienne ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... time on the second morning after our arrival. I was eating an omelette at the time. I offered him a share of it and a cup of coffee. Gorman refused both; but he helped himself to a glass of iced water. This shows how adaptable Gorman is. Hardly any European can drink iced water at or immediately after breakfast during the first week he spends in America. I do not take to the stuff till I have been there about a fortnight. But Gorman, in spite of his patriotism, has a good deal of the cosmopolitan ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... is very adaptable—you interest yourself in their pursuits, and so deceive them into a false estimate of your worth. Your education—speak not of it; ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... phylum passed in North America, but it is instructive to note that, despite their many resemblances, the two series can be connected only in their far distant beginnings. The pecoran stock became vastly more expanded and diversified than did the camel line and was evidently more plastic and adaptable, spreading eventually over all the continents except Australia, and forming to-day one of the dominant types of mammals, while the camels are on the decline and not far from extinction. The Pecora successively ramified into the deer, antelopes, sheep, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... Baby," "the Suckin' Vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with his sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories about silk pajamas and specially imported neckwear, to the "friend's" discredit. Harvey was a very adaptable person, with a keen eye and ear for every face and ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... Doctrine. In Africa and the islands of the sea the German colonial policy has not been a success. Dr. Dernburg as colonial secretary has many a time stood up in the Reichstag and warned the Germans that the home military system and rules were not adaptable to colonization in foreign parts; that Germans must adapt themselves to foreign countries and not attempt at first to make their manners the standard in the colonies they ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron

... a fairly good general education. The better her general education, the more successful she is likely to be. She should be intelligent, obliging, and adaptable. She should have a strong sense of honour, for she is largely on her own responsibility, and the welfare of the home is often trusted in her hands. The ideal household employee should have some of ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... no time to stay inside the house and be proper. Still, the gentle influence told, imperceptibly softening and toning her character, and giving her a standard by which to adapt herself; and Norah was nothing if not adaptable. Then, six months previously, the old man they all loved had quietly faded out of life; and after he had gone his widow could no longer remain in the place where he had died. She pined slowly, until Dick Stephenson, the son, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... both in the plate-making and in the printing. While it gives a rich and uniform impression on the letter paper, and is highly valuable for reproducing pictures and ornate designs, it is adaptable only for special purposes and is not generally regarded as suitable for commercial work. A photogravure plate costs from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents a square inch, or about $12.00 to $50.00 for a letterhead. The printing costs about the same ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem so common-place and natural—in nine months. The mind of Adam Jeffson is adaptable. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... dark, mobile face, saying words that were as impulsive as her gesture. Maurice was always vaguely chilled by her outbursts of light-heartedness: they seemed to him strained and unreal, so accustomed had he grown to the darker, less adaptable side of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep footmen clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... on I'd take the risk," she thought; but the lights were not on and it was necessary to pass into the dark interior and into a darker bath-room—a room which is notoriously adaptable for murder—before she could ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... planter good humoredly, and gallantly following Mrs. Worthington who had risen with the view of putting into immediate effect her scheme of initiating these slow people into the unsuspected possibilities of euchre; a game which, however adaptable in other ways, could certainly not be indulged in by seven persons. After each one proffering, as is usual on such occasions, his readiness to assume the character of on-looker, Mr. Worthington's claim to entire indifference, if not inability—confirmed by his wife—was accepted as the most sincere, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... proclamation warned all Dutch subjects under penalty against exporting "arms, ammunition, or other war materials to the parties at war [to include] everything that is adaptable for immediate ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell

... every adventurer to Australia has the luck of Pisistratus. Indeed, though the poor laborer, and especially the poor operative from London and the great trading towns (who has generally more of the quick knack of learning,—the adaptable faculty,—required in a new colony, than the simple agricultural laborer), are pretty sure to succeed, the class to which I belong is one in which failures are numerous and success the exception,—I mean young men with scholastic education and the habits of gentlemen; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... which seemed insatiable has subsided, when the honeymoon of marriage, or of a free union, has passed. Then only is it possible to see if what remains is true love, indifference, hatred or a mixture of these three sentiments, capable or not of becoming more or less adaptable and tolerable. This is why sudden amours are always dangerous, and why only long and profound mutual acquaintance before marriage can lead to a happy ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... impressed with the ready talent, the adaptable talent, and the facility of this accomplished journalist, and as their acquaintance improved he was let into many of the secrets of success in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... of dressing in producing the sentiment of a countenance, no better illustration can be had than a series of caps, curls, wreaths, ribbons, etc., painted so as to be adaptable to one face; the totally different character imparted by a helmet, or a garland of roses, to the same set of features, is a "caution" to irregular beauties who console themselves with the fascinating variety of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... equalled only by the metrical repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Given a few months in New York or Paris, and Mindanao's future Sultana would bloom like a rose in manners and millinery, for, despite her reserve, she is adaptable and what ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... inbreeding, with the prospect of an indefinite stratification of society, or for the amalgamation of all cultural and racial elements into a homogeneous whole, and the development of a race more versatile and adaptable than any the world has yet known. The general tendency will undoubtedly be toward amalgamation, but there are decided tendencies in the other direction, as for instance in the "first families of Virginia," and in that large element of the New England population which prides itself upon its ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner

... only really large unity of European civilization in the later prehistoric ages, namely, its social organization in patriarchal households linked into clans and tribes. We may doubt whether this social type is permanently adaptable to a forest regime, any more than to industrial life. Certainly forest folk outside peninsular Europe only display it rarely and imperfectly. But it is characteristic of all pastoral folk; once established, it coheres and persists under great external ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... spread by the migration of the sons and grandsons of Virginia throughout the middle and western South as far as Missouri and Texas. The task system, on the other hand, was almost wholly confined to the rice coast. The gang method was adaptable to operations on any scale. If a proprietor were of the great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and his sons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step for step at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe. If there were a dozen ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... the great mast was rigged and hoisted foot by foot into place. The electricians had contrived a catchment pool and a wheel in the torrent close at hand—for the little Mulhausen dynamo with its turbinal volute used by the telegraphists was quite adaptable to water driving, and on the sixth day in the evening the apparatus was in working order and the Prince was calling—weakly, indeed, but calling—to his air-fleet across the empty spaces of the world. For a time ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... words do is to give us one great resultant of knowledge; to tell us that the possession and use of knowledge endows the man who knows with a force and efficiency which he would lack without it. Few words are more elastic and adaptable than the verb substantive. "Is" can denote a wide variety of ideas, from that of personal identity, as when I see that yonder distant figure is my brother; to that of equivalence, as when a stamped and signed piece of thin paper called a bank-note is five pounds of gold; ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... arm by which the power of this Confederacy can be estimated or felt by foreign nations, and the only standing military force which can never be dangerous to our own liberties at home. A permanent naval peace establishment, therefore, adapted to our present condition, and adaptable to that gigantic growth with which the nation is advancing in its career, is among the subjects which have already occupied the foresight of the last Congress, and which will deserve your serious deliberations. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... with quite solid teeth adapted to his diet, a diet consisting of almost anything any creature had ever considered edible. Like most successful forms of intelligent life, Gresth Gkae was omnivorous. An intelligent form of life is necessarily adaptable, and adaptation meant being able to eat what ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... make of her, not only the most beautiful and wonderful product of human skill, but also a formidable self-contained engine of warfare, I mentally confessed that not only was seamanship a most fascinating science, but also that sailors were the most ingenious and adaptable specimens of the entire ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... house furnishings are surprisingly adaptable. As with people, it is largely a matter of bringing out their pleasing traits and subduing their unattractive aspects. A quaint piece of bric-a-brac that was a misfit in the city apartment may look just ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as to make a man prefer a less offence to a greater—simple theft, for example, to violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must be adaptable to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be greater in 'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the offence indicates a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the particular offence, but of the undetected offences. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... of watermarked paper for these stamps occurred in 1874, the paper being that familiar to collectors of British Colonial stamps as watermarked "Crown C.C." The paper was not readily adaptable for the small sheets of the Gambia stamps, and the method of cutting it to suitable sizes for these sheets has produced some ...
— Gambia • Frederick John Melville

... expects no more than one gets! Avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt others Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests Could not as yet disagree with suavity Cunning, the astute, the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes Depressing to think that I would go on living after death Difficult for a good man to see the evil round him Efforts to eliminate instinct Events are the parents of the future Events were ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... supported, for after the first shock and disturbance of our arrival we found them cheerful people; indeed, Miss Hope was quite a merry soul. But then she had never known any other life, and human nature is very adaptable. Further, if I may say so, she had grown up a lady in the true sense of the word. After all, why should she not, seeing that her mother, the Bible and Nature had been her only associates and sources of information, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... for regarding this as the least desirable form of relief. In the first place, it is often administered by politicians, and becomes a source of political corruption. But, what is even more important, it is official and therefore not easily adaptable to varying needs. Private charities can undertake a large expenditure for one family, when a large expenditure will put the family beyond the need of charity; but official relief must always be hampered by the fear of establishing a precedent, and inadequate ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... means of "veneers" of materials more precious and beautiful than those employed in the structure, which becomes, as it were, the canvas of the picture, and not the picture itself. For these purposes there are no materials more apt, more adaptable, more enduring, richer in potentialities of beauty than the products of ceramic art. They are easily and inexpensively produced of any desired shape, color, texture; their hard, dense surface resists the action of the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... convinced that the first step in social redemption is adequate and adaptable shelter for the family. Just so long as tradition and thoughtlessness bind the wife and mother to that form of housekeeping which taxes all the forces of man to supply money and of women to spend it, so long will the most intelligent women decline to ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards



Words linked to "Adaptable" :   pliant, all-mains, convertible, unadaptable, pliable, adapt, elastic, adjustable, variable, universal, adaptability, flexible, filmable



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