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






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ductile" Quotes from Famous Books



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

... several amusing half-hours, albeit hotter than the innermost pit. Nothing ever changes there: one sees the same artificers and the same routine; the same flames rage; glass is the same mystery, beyond all conjuring, so ductile and malleable here, so brittle and rigid everywhere else. There you sit, or stand, some score of visitors, while the wizards round the furnace busily and incredibly convert molten blobs of anything (you would have said) but glass into delicate ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... The Hottentot, ductile as wax, except about the price of the diamond, assented calmly; and next day they diverged, and got into forest scenery, and their eyes were soothed with green glades here and there, wherever the clumps of trees sheltered the grass from the panting sun. Animals abounded, and were tame. Staines, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... indication of internal purity by the delighted parents; who, knowing the deceitfulness of these flattering appearances, should eagerly avail themselves of this period, when once wasted never to be regained, of good humoured acquiescence and dutiful docility: a period when the soft and ductile temper of the mind renders it more easily susceptible of the impressions we desire; and when, therefore, habits should be formed, which may assist our natural weakness to resist the temptations to which we shall be exposed in ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... cannon-balls into shape proves their incapacity to cast iron, unless it results from a peculiarity of the ore, so frequent in India, which, instead of yielding cast-iron at once when reduced in the usual way, gives wootz—a condition of iron closely allied to steel, ductile but not fusible. Of this I had no ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia could mould her as she pleased; but happily Lesbia was not the kind of young person to take advantage of this privilege; she was thoroughly ductile or docile, and had no desire, at present, which ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... shall draw out your plates of glass and beat out your bars of iron till you have encompassed us all,—if your style is of the practical kind,—with endless perspective of black skeleton and blinding square,—or if your style is to be of the ideal kind—you shall wreathe your streets with ductile leafage, and roof them with variegated crystal—you shall put, if you will, all London under one blazing dome of many colours that shall light the clouds round it with its flashing, as far as to the sea. And still, I ask you, What after this? Do you suppose those ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

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

... each oath, and gave his life the lie: Renounced whate'er he sacred held and dear, Renounced his country's cause, and sank into a Peer. Some have bought ermine, venal Honour's veil, When set by bankrupt Majesty to sale Or drew Nobility's coarse ductile thread >From some distinguished harlot's titled bed. Not thus ennobled Samuel!-no worth from his mud the sluggish reptile forth; No parts to flatter, and no grace to please, With scarce an insect's impotence to tease, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving traveller, Big with great news, and shouted the report For which the world had waited, now firm fact, Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea, And landed on our coast, and pulsating With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries From boat to boat, and to the echoes round, Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, Match God's equator with a zone of art, And lift man's public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... ingeniously explained to you how the angular offspring of this eight-sided ancestor had developed themselves, by force of circumstances, into their distinct metallic perfections; how the galena had become gray and brittle under prolonged subterranean heat, and the gold yellow and ductile, as it was rolled among ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... reverence. The altar is not here four-square, Nor in a form triangular; Nor made of glass, or wood, or stone, But of a little transverse bone; Which boys and bruckel'd children call (Playing for points and pins) cockall. Whose linen-drapery is a thin, Subtile, and ductile codling's skin; Which o'er the board is smoothly spread With little seal-work damasked. The fringe that circumbinds it, too, Is spangle-work of trembling dew, Which, gently gleaming, makes a show, Like frost-work glitt'ring on the snow. Upon this fetuous board doth stand Something ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... us have ever seen iron, the pure metal, soft, ductile and white like silver. As soon as it is exposed to the air it veils itself with a thin film of rust and becomes black and then red. For that reason there is practically no iron in the world except what man has made. It is rarer than gold, than diamonds; we find ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... alternative is not to be despised. The widow is somewhat rococo; an old-fashioned jewel kept in cotton-wool, and brought out on occasions to shine with a factitious brilliancy, like old Dutch garnets backed with tinfoil; but she is still pretty. She is ductile, amiable, and weak to a degree that promises a husband the sovereign dominion. Why break your heart for this fair devil of a daughter, who looks capable, if offended, of anything in the way of revenge, from a horsewhip to slow poison? Are ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... play; How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie, How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry, 60 Maggots half-form'd in rhyme exactly meet, And learn to crawl upon poetic feet. Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes, And ductile Dulness new meanders takes; There motley images her fancy strike, Figures ill pair'd, and similes unlike. She sees a mob of metaphors advance, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance; How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; How Farce and Epic[252] ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... Governor I presume to say dares not exercise any Authority, tho invested with it by the Charter, without express Leave from his Masters. Administration must be strangely blind indeed, or they must think us the most foolish and ductile people under Heaven (in which they are greatly mistaken) to imagine that in such a Condition we are to be flatterd with hopes of any kind Disposition of theirs towards us. The Governor & other Friends to the Ministry or rather friends to themselves would fain have it ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... goddess! so propitious shine On me, my consort, and my royal line! A yearling bullock to thy name shall smoke, Untamed, unconscious of the galling yoke, With ample forehead, and yet tender horns, Whose budding honours ductile gold adorns." ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

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

... her in abject wonder from the edge of her chair. Dignity and resolve were in the ductile form she had hitherto folded under her wing. In an hour the heroine had risen to the measure of the hero. Without being exactly aware what creature she was dealing with, Berry acknowledged to herself it was not one of the common run, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the pipes are simmering, Dip this fairy rod within; If like glass the surface glimmering, Then the casting may begin. Brisk, brisk to the rest— Quick!—the fusion to test; And welcome, my merry men, welcome the sign, If the ductile and brittle united combine. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

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

... they will never agree, save when they have supplied themselves with a sufficient dose of aesthetic knowledge, which will enable them to recognize that they are both right. Artificial beauty, created by man, is a much more ductile and efficacious ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... immemorial deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

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



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



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