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Malleable   /mˈæliəbəl/   Listen
Malleable

adjective
1.
Easily influenced.  Synonym: ductile.
2.
Capable of being shaped or bent or drawn out.  Synonyms: ductile, pliable, pliant, tensile, tractile.  "Malleable metals such as gold" , "They soaked the leather to made it pliable" , "Pliant molten glass" , "Made of highly tensile steel alloy"






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"Malleable" Quotes from Famous Books



... And Carl felt that he might be the first to cull the flower that had so long waited. He did not see, just then, the hollow beneath her chin, the two lines of sinew that, bounding a depression, disappeared beneath her collarette. He saw only her soul. He guessed that she would be more malleable than the widow, and he was sure that she was not in a position, as the widow was, to make comparisons between husbands. Certainly there appeared to be some confusion as to the proprietorship of this cat. Certainly he could not ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... 1-7/8 inches by 85 inches long are used. The original tubes may have been copper or brass since these were easier to keep tight than the less malleable iron tubes. The present tube sheet is of iron but was originally copper. Its thickness cannot be conveniently measured, but it is greater than that of the boiler shell, probably about 1/2 to 5/8 inch. While copper tubes and tube sheets were not much used in this country after about 1870, ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White

... to work, or of disobedience to orders. Much less have I seen frightful commotions, or massacres, or a return of evil for evil, or revenge for past injuries, even when they had it amply in their power. In fact, the Negro character is malleable at the European will. There is, as I have observed before, a singular pliability in the constitutional temper of the Negroes, and they have besides a quick sense of their own interest, which influences their conduct. I am convinced, that West India masters can do what they will ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... in which an independent tube is invaluable. Three forms are used by the author. The "velvet eye" cannot traumatize the mucosa (Fig. 9). To hold a foreign body by suction, a squarely cut off end is necessary. For use through the tracheotomic wound without a bronchoscope a malleable tube (Fig. 10) ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... an examination of one of their awards, which was peculiarly injudicious. I allude to that concerning the mode of rendering platina malleable. Respecting, as I did, the illustrious philosopher who invented the art, and who has left many other claims to the gratitude of mankind, I esteem it no disrespect to his memory to place that subject in ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... it has for years. And let but only Things first turn up auspicious here below— Mark what I say—the right stars, too, will show themselves. Come to the generals. All is in the glow, And must be beaten while 'tis malleable. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... vessels. Later the Phoenicians improved the art and afterward, as you have seen, the Greeks and Romans took it up. There is a strange tale of how, during the reign of Tiberius, a glass-maker discovered how to make a kind of glass which would not break. It was a sort of malleable glass." ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett

... know, is known to the arts in three forms: cast or crude, steel, and wrought or malleable. Cast iron varies much in chemical composition, being a mixture of iron and carbon chiefly, as constant factors, with which silicium in small quantities (from 1 to 5 per cent.), phosphorus, sulphur, and sometimes manganese (e.g. spiegeleisen) and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... 16 parts of copper, 7 of platinum, and 1 of zinc. When steel is alloyed with 1/500 part of platinum, or with 1/500 part of silver, it is rendered much harder, more malleable, and better adapted for all kinds of cutting instruments. Note.—In making alloys, care must be taken to have the more infusible metals melted first, and ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... treatment was necessary but it will be observed by every one who attempts to render these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, that they are marvelously independent of all temporary modes and circumstances. They remain essentially the same, after changes that would affect the identity ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... follows: A convivial meeting is apt to grow tumultuous as the drinking proceeds; every man becomes light-headed, and fancies that he can rule the whole world. 'Doubtless.' And did we not say that the souls of the drinkers, when subdued by wine, are made softer and more malleable at the hand of the legislator? the docility of childhood returns to them. At times however they become too valiant and disorderly, drinking out of their turn, and interrupting one another. And the business of the legislator is to infuse into them that divine fear, ...
— Laws • Plato

... threatening to reveal unpleasant details; for budding dynasties, like infants, have much soiled linen. De Marsay, during his ministry, repaired the mistake of his predecessors, who had ignored the utility of this man. He gave him those secret missions which require a conscience made malleable by the hammer of necessity, an adroitness which recoils before no methods, impudence, and, above all, the self-possession, the coolness, the embracing glance which constitute the hired bravi of thought and statesmanship. Such instruments are both ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... manuscript letters, from the published answers of Sismondi, of Foscolo and of Mme. de Souza to letters of hers which have disappeared. The hysterical frenzy of Alfieri seems to have entered into this woman; he has worked up this naturally placid but malleable soul, this woman in bad health, deprived of all friends, jealously guarded by enemies, weak and depressed, until she has become another himself, "weeping, raving," like himself, but unable to relieve, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... function may be, is unique in fitness for, in a consequent "call" to, that function. We [242] know how much has been done to educate the world, under the supposition that man is a creature of very malleable substance, indifferent in himself, pretty much what influences may make of him. Plato, on the other hand, assures us that no one of us "is like another all in all."—Proton men phyetai hekastos ou pany homoios hekasto, alla ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... national map, and there seeking out a country priest, not his brother-in-law or godfather, not even a priest of his own church, had said—"This is a better man than I." Indeed this is a man of pure gold. A gold worker would have to mix at least three carats of silver with him before he would be malleable. But as the question has been asked, it must be seriously considered. "Good, good," replied the great man, "but the bestowal of an order involves certain formalities. The sovereign can not contemplate the eventuality of a refusal: the person to whom such a distinction ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... indeed almost every other branch of the arts. Though their cast-iron wares appear light and neat, and are annealed in heated ovens, to take off somewhat of their brittleness, yet their process of rendering cast iron malleable is imperfect, and all their manufactures of wrought iron are consequently of a very inferior kind, not only in workmanship but also in the quality of the metal. In most of the other metals their manufactures ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... demonstration except the steady, liquid look that spoke the birth of a great, understanding comradeship. The father fed his hunger for possession, which had been irresistibly growing in him for the last two months, on that look. He saw his son's strength as something that had at last become malleable; and this was the moment when the metal was at white heat, ready for knowing turns with the pincers and knowing blows of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... youthful hypnotic Napoleon whose will was law and at whose bidding his better judgment curled up and died. In Mr. Pett's life Ann's father had filled this role. He had dominated Mr. Pett at an age when the mind is most malleable. And now—so true is it that though Time may blunt our boyish memories the traditions of boyhood live on in us and an emotional crisis will bring them to the surface as an explosion brings up the fish that lurk in the nethermost mud—it was as if he were facing the youthful Hammond ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained, since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned name; and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... blood-red cape, and not the matador. But, with Sofia an onlooker, determined to make this the fight of his life, El Tigre tossed aside the muleta, wrapped the crimson cape about his body, and stood alone awaiting the bull's charge, his malleable sword-blade bent slightly downward, sufficiently to give a true thrust behind the shoulder, a down-curve into ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... other than the State under which he holds. It is, of course, quite possible to adapt the terms of Roman private law to international use. "Dominium," "Possessio," "Occupatio," have long been so adapted, but it has yet to be proved that "Usufructus" is equally malleable. I can recall no other use of the term in international discussions than the somewhat rhetorical statement that an invader should consider himself as merely the "usufructuary" of the resources of the country ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... exhibit of precious metals had, as an appropriate frame, a beautiful pavilion erected entirely from her local products. The abundance of gold in this important mining state is evinced by the fact that twenty-one of her thirty-three counties are producing that most desirable and malleable ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... lived among them in many different places, I may claim to know something about them. As a class they are gentle, affectionate, industrious, well-meaning and highly intelligent. They are the most malleable of human metal, the finest material for the sculptor of humanity, the most impressionable of wax. In the right hands they can be moulded to anything, by the right leader led to any height. And conversely, of them a devil can make fiends. By the wrong ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... the liveliest satisfaction Henrietta could have boxed her own pretty ears in punishment of her passing weakness.—Yet surely time still remained wherein to retrieve her error and restore her ascendency. Damaris might be unusually clever; but she was also finely inexperienced, malleable, open to influence as yet. Let Henrietta then see to it, and that without delay or hesitation, bringing to bear every ingenious social art, and—if necessary—artifice, in which long practice ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... him malleable now, that had been so stern and unyielding before. She raised her eyes, and through her tears she turned their heavenly blue full upon the grey ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... is the velocity at which the wheels of railway trains may run if we take 4,000 lbs. per square inch as the greatest strain to which malleable iron should be subjected? ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... assurance was given that immediate steps would be taken to relieve his Royal Highness. The interview was enlivened by a considerable quantity of wine; and after a pretty long flow of the generous bowl, Dundas's promises were energetically ratified. Never was there a man more "malleable," to use Wraxall's expression, than Harry Dundas. Pitt soon afterward had an audience equally ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... believe it will not be very long before the iron disappears, giving place entirely to the last mentioned metal. With respect to the term "steel," I am ready to agree that it is impossible to say where, chemically speaking, iron ends and steel begins. But (leaving out malleable cast iron) I apply this term "steel" to any malleable ductile metal of which iron forms the principal element and which has been in fusion, and I do so in contradistinction to the metal which may be similar chemically, but which has been prepared ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... gray pirate, as malleable as cast iron and as soft. He was a large, big-boned man, aggressive, dominant, the kind that takes the world by the throat and shakes success from it. The contour of his hook-nosed face had something rapacious written ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... said, "it will be a pleasure to train you; and as you are young and malleable you will adapt yourself to the new order of things when it comes. Both Alvarado and I will write to your father; I am sure he will send ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... the art of making glass malleable was actually discovered under the reign of Tiberius, and that the shop and tools of the artist were destroyed, lest, by the establishment of this invention, gold and silver should lose their value. Dion adds, that the author of the discovery was ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... quicker, more universally intelligent, more ambitious of general knowledge, less indulgent of stupidity and ignorance in others, harder, sharper, brighter with the surface brightness of steel, than is an Englishman; but he is more brittle, less enduring, less malleable, and, I think, less capable of impressions. The mind of the Englishman has more imagination, but that of the American more incision. The American is a great observer; but he observes things material rather than things social or picturesque. He is a constant and ready speculator; but all speculations, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... Covert, Townsendville, N. Y.—This hame tug, according to the present invention, is made of a strip of malleable iron or other suitable material, perforated or provided with V-Shaped holes or slots having a center tongue piece, for the reception of a V-Shaped block fixed at one end of the trace, by means of which block the trace is engaged with the hame tug, where through ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... throne in A.D. 14, and began a career of infamy. How little knowledge was likely to gain from his patronage is shown by the fact, recorded by Pliny, that the shop and tools of the artist who discovered how to make glass malleable were destroyed. Assassins and perpetrators of every abomination were the ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... made the pleasanter by the thought that after all it was like taking a shot in the dark. It seemed like an hour, the piece of splintered wood was burned almost away, and what little temper there was in the malleable wire was quite gone from it, when Tom triumphantly pushed it through ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... for Mrs. Roebuck's view of the situation. There can be no doubt whatever, that Mr. Roebuck's influence, hopefulness and courage were of inestimable value at this period to the over-wrought and anxious inventor. Watt was not made of malleable stuff, and, besides, he was tied to his mission. He was bound to ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... alloy, or mixture of pure iron, which is almost infusible, with a small portion of some other metal which fuses in a much lower degree of heat. So long as this alloy remains cold, and both metals are in the solid state, the mixture is malleable; but, if heated to a sufficient degree to liquify the more fusible metal, the particles of the liquid metal, which are interposed between the particles of the metal remaining solid, must destroy their continuity, and occasion the alloy ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... seem to be absorbed readily by the reduced aluminum when copper is present; but in one experiment a mixture composed of old files, 60 per cent.; nickel, 5 per cent.; and of 10 per cent. aluminum bronze 35 per cent., was melted together, and it gave a malleable product that stood ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... ?e?? mue?a being familiar to us as household words, it seems impossible that he who had tried them once should have need of them no more. Instances—all with initial m—are as follows: mechanics, machine, maxim, mission, mode, monastic, marsh, magnify, malcontent, majority, manly, malleable, malignancy, maritime, manna, manslaughter, masterly, market-day-folks, maid-price, mealy, meekly, mercifully, merchant-like, memorial, mercenary, mention, memorandums, mercurial, metropolis, miserably, mindful, meridian, medal, metaphysics, ministration, mimic, misapply, misgovernment, misquote, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... magniloquent, maladroit, malfeasance, malignity, malleable, mandate, matutinal, medieval, mephitic, mercenary, mercurial, meretricious, metamorphose, meticulous, microcosm, misanthropic, misogyny, misprision, mitigate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... following the promulgation of this notion of squatter sovereignty, we had the idea of non-intervention introduced into the Senate of the United States, and it is strange to me how that idea has expanded. It seems to have been more malleable than gold; to have been hammered out to an extent that covers boundless regions undiscovered by those who proclaimed the doctrine. Non-intervention then meant, as the debates show, that Congress should neither prohibit nor establish slavery in the Territories. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... been loaded "cross-wise." This car is equipped with double the usual number of wheels, and by making each set of trucks a separate unit (the front and rear trucks being bolted to a steel beam with malleable iron connection), a slight up-and-down movement is permitted, which enables this transfer car to adjust itself to any unevenness in the track, which is a very ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... the leaf"; we watch all the details of its methods and the progress of its labours. We see the flexed leaf assume the vertical under the awl-stroke which the insect applies to the pedicle, "when, partially deprived of sap, the leaf becomes more flexible, more malleable; it is in a sense partly paralysed, only half alive." Then we follow the rolling process; "the imperturbable deliberation of the worker as it rolls its cigar, which finally hangs perpendicularly at the end of the bent and wounded ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... of this seen, particularly in the making of iron, when it was proposed to convert the rough gueze into good malleable iron bar, by rolling it at a welding heat, instead of hammering it ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... from the brothers of the belles and beauties before referred to, who mustered in full force, there was a reserved corps of cavaliers who, though past the early and crude bloom of their first youth, were still malleable material. Who could desire a more gallant attendant than the agile though elderly Major Beaufort, who, with a large party of nieces, daughters, and granddaughters, made the tour of the watering-places each succeeding year, pervading the atmosphere of each with the subtle ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... compact—strange at least for her, considering that only a few hours before she had thought of him as a friendly, but narrow-minded, old stranger. Something weak and malleable in her nature made her enter lightly into the compact, although all the time she knew that something more deeply serious and responsible would never allow her to break it. A faint regret for even an atom of ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... that other's will grew stronger. And the Terran read into that the overconfidence which he believed would be part of the enemy's character. The one who was sending him to destroy his own work had no suspicion that the victim was not entirely malleable, ready to be used as he himself would use a knife or a force ax. Shann strode steadily downslope. With a small spurt of fear he knew that in a way that unseen other was right; the pressure was taking over, even though ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... amazingly complex personality of a human being," he went on, "there does exist some vital constituent, a part of consciousness, that can leave the body for a short time without involving death; that it is something occasionally visible to others; something malleable by thought and desire—especially by intense and prolonged yearning; and that it can even bring relief to its owner by satisfying in some subjective fashion the very yearnings that ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... tongue will run post sixteen stages together! Who would make the devil himself malleable; then, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... it would effect little or nothing, sir, sending our Miss B. notes. She is not in the proper frame of mind to appreciate them. I saw her face when she handed me the letter you have just read, and I assure you, sir, she is not in a malleable mood." ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... Ford asks. It appears that certain business matters call him to the north of England for a few days, this rendering it impossible for him to receive little Ogden tomorrow. It is not my custom to criticize parents who have paid me the compliment of placing their sons at the most malleable and important period of their lives, in my—ah—charge, but I must say that a little longer notice would have been a—in fact, a convenience. But Mr Ford, like so many of his countrymen, is what I believe is called a hustler. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... malleable metal, as copper, wrought iron, &c., which clinch by turning back the points in rough-built fir boats where roofs and clinching ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... had in malleable iron for fifteen cents and as it is not submitted to hard strains, like a trowel, will do as well as the seventy-five-cent imported sorts. It will save the life of innumerable seedlings, in lifting them ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... a thing in itself, without any symbolical significance, it is a metallic element, having a characteristic yellow color, very heavy, very soft, the most ductile, malleable, and indestructible of metals. In its minted form it is the life force of the body economic, since on its abundance and free circulation the well-being of that body depends; it is that for which all men strive and contend, because without it they cannot comfortably ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... India. It rises 23 feet 8 inches above the ground, and its base, which is bulbous, is riveted to two stone slabs two feet below the surface. Its diameter at the base is 16 feet 4 inches and at the capital is 12 inches. It is a malleable forging of pure iron, without alloy, and 7.66 specific gravity. According to the estimates of engineers, it weighs about six tons, and it is remarkable that the Hindus at that age could forge a bar of iron larger and heavier than was ever forged ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... she asked. "Let us all return to Judaism; thy brother Vidal is young and malleable, he will follow us. We will be secret; from my girlhood I know how suspicion may be evaded. We will gradually change all the servants save Pedro, and have none but blacks. Why shouldst thou leave this beautiful ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... childhood; and it is in the drawling Lothian voice that I repeat it to myself. Let the precisians call my speech that of the Lothians. And if it be not pure, alas! what matters it? The day draws near when this illustrious and malleable tongue shall be quite forgotten; and Burns's Ayrshire, and Dr. MacDonald's Aberdeen-awa', and Scott's brave, metropolitan utterance will be all equally the ghosts of speech. Till then I would love to have my hour as a native Maker, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fidelity. At moment the conviction meant no more to him than if he had been assured of the honesty of the first strangers he met in the street. A stranger—that was what she had always been to him. So malleable outwardly, she had remained insensible to the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... his strength and stature. She, with her softer as well as finer nature, more pliable and more malleable, rejoiced in her very weakness and, his subjection once secured, instantly bowed to his ascendancy; now she had brought him under her slavery, she acknowledged him for the master, the hero, the god, burned to obey, to admire, to offer her homage. In the shade of the shrubbery he gave her a long, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France



Words linked to "Malleable" :   pliant, tractable, formed, manipulable, tractile, malleability, tensile



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