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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
docile
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Kangaroos are not as docile as they look.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Also, Dierdre is a docile baby.
▪ As workers we were considered ideal: well educated, very docile, and cheap.
▪ Has it made him more docile and thus easier to control, or has it destabilised him?
▪ However, it did not make him a docile infant.
▪ I talk to them while the muzzle is tied in place and they then remain very docile.
▪ Then castrate him to render him docile.
▪ Where this wins over the dancefloor bandwagon jumpers is in its up front and in your face approach rather than being docile.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Docile

Docile \Doc"ile\, a. [L. docilis,fr. docere to teach; cf. Gr. ?, and L. discere to learn, Gr. ? learned, ? knowing: cf. F. docile. Cf. Doctor, Didactic, Disciple.]

  1. Teachable; easy to teach; docible. [Obs.]

  2. Disposed to be taught; tractable; easily managed; as, a docile child.

    The elephant is at once docible and docile. -- C. J. Smith.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
docile

late 15c., "easily taught," from Italian or French docile, from Latin docilis "easily taught," from docere "teach" (see doctor). Sense of "obedient, submissive" first recorded 1774.

Wiktionary
docile

a. 1 yield to control or supervision, direction, or management. 2 Ready to accept instruction or direction.

WordNet
docile
  1. adj. willing to be taught or led or supervised or directed; "the docile masses of an enslaved nation" [ant: stubborn]

  2. ready and willing to be taught; "docile pupils eager for instruction"; "teachable youngsters" [syn: teachable]

  3. easily handled or managed; "a gentle old horse, docile and obedient" [syn: gentle]

Usage examples of "docile".

Lord Bute and the Princess Dowager agreed that if they were going to maintain their hold on the King he must marry a docile German princess preferably one who spoke no English.

A succession of hasty directions to the leading cabman, one of the most docile of men, ended in the performance of a marvellous piece of jugglery with the big trunk, which he first balanced for an infinitesimal period of time on his nose, and then caught with his big toe.

As prisoners, however, they quickly proved docile and obedient to their captors, even to the point of assisting in drafting surrender appeals to their erstwhile comrades.

He had hopes, too, of ultimately catching the good attorney napping, and leading him too, bound and docile, into his ergastulum, although he was himself just now in jeopardy from that quarter.

The battle of sensualism, the scramble over material interests, the wearing absorption in the small and evanescent struggles of social rivalry, the irritated attention given to the ever thickening claims of external things, the pulverizing discussions of all sorts of opinions by hostile schools, are fatal to that concentrated calmness of mood, that unity of passion, that serene amplitude of intellectual and imaginative scope, that docile religious receptiveness of soul, requisite for the fit contemplation of a doctrine so solemn and sublime as that of immortality.

But she knew Gur would stand there, docile under the abuse, offering no resistance.

She performed upon me with great zeal the same ceremonies that I had done for her the day before, and she was as gentle and docile as possible.

Harry helped Ron get Jim Edmundson back to the plateau, Hermione leading the docile Elliott and trying to explain to him that they were going to ride a hippogriff now.

Sophie in towards the frigate, whose crew were going back to their task of changing from a lateen to a square rig: they swarmed thick into the shrouds, looking curiously at the docile brig, which was just about to be boarded by their launch.

I performed a great many ablutions on every part of her body, making her assume all sorts of positions, for she was perfectly docile, but, as I was afraid of betraying myself, I felt more suffering than enjoyment, and my indiscreet hands, running over every part of her person, and remaining longer and more willingly on a certain spot, the sensitiveness of which is extreme, the poor girl was excited by an ardent fire which was at last quenched by the natural result of that excitement.

Conspiracies to drive people off the land into cities, where, Pardoe says, they can be regulated by chips interacting with their nervous systems, subliminal messages inserted in TV and Musak, endless surveillance from CCTV and the Internet and geosynchronous police satellites, and now genes inserted by nasal spray or via proprietary aspirin to make everyone docile.

He strove to implant this vision in the minds of Frankenstein and the others, and kept coming back again and again to the specification that all the workers ultimately produced must not only be docile, strong, and enduring, but should be able to subsist, like swine or goats, on acorns and other inexpensive roughage, with now and then a handful of berries as reward for some particularly difficult labor.

Master somewhiles doat, In dreamings on a docile universe Beneath an immarcessible Charlemagne.

That might even explain how Cwealm knew the tunnel, although the tanist was notorious for always choosing docile mounts.

Symeon fed these to the hippogriff, the docile beast taking the food from his hand, then wended his way back toward the basilica.