- plastic
- plastic, pliable, pliant, ductile, malleable, adaptable are applied to things and to persons regarded as material susceptible of being modified in form or nature.Something plastic has the quality (as of wax, clay, or plaster) of being soft enough to be molded or to receive an impression yet capable of hardening into a final form{
a pill mass should be plastic; that is, it should be capable of being worked— C. O. Lee
}{the language at the period during which the Bible was being translated into English was in its most plastic stage— Lowes
}{life is plastic: it will assume any shape you choose to put on it— Gogarty
}Something pliable or pliant has the quality (as of willow twigs) of being supple enough to be easily bent or manipulated and therefore yielding without resistance. Pliable, in extended use, usually suggests the imposition of or submission to another's will{I flatter myself that I have some influence over her. She is pliable— Hardy
}{I've always been a pliable sort of person, and I let the ladies guide me— Upton Sinclair
}{he was criticized as being too pliable, too eager to please— Beverly Smith
}Pliant, on the other hand, suggests flexibility rather than obedience{art which is alive and pliant in the hands of men— Quiller-Couch
}{ready to be used or not used, picked up or cast aside pliant to fate like a reed to the wind— Goudge
}Something ductile has the quality of a tensile metal (as copper) of being tenacious enough to be permanently drawn out or extended, or of water, of being made to flow through channels. In extended use ductile often approaches plastic and pliant but it may have distinctive connotations directly derived from its literal senses, such as quick responsiveness (as distinguished from submissiveness) to influences that would form, guide, or fashion{verse ... is easier to write than prose .... Mr. Shaw would have found his story still more ductile in the meter of Hiawatha —Quiller-Couch
}{a vast portion of the public feels rather than thinks, a ductile multitude drawn easily by the arts of the demagogue— Loveman
}Sometimes fluidity within bounds is connoted{smooth, ductile, and even, his fancy must flow— Cowper)
}Something malleable is literally or figuratively capable of being beaten or pressed into shape, especially after being conditioned (as by heating){tempers . . . rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation— Irving
}{finds a sort of malleable mind in front of him that he can play with as he will— Masefield
}Something adaptable is capable of being modified or of modifying itself to suit other conditions, other needs, or other uses. As applied to persons the term implies sometimes a pliant, but more often an accommodating, disposition and a readiness to make one's habits, one's opinions, and one's wishes correspond to those of one's present society or environment{he was an adaptable person. He had yielded to Joyce's training in being quietly instead of noisily disagreeable— Sinclair Lewis
}{anarchism has always been an elastic and adaptable faith, and looking round for a suitable machinery to replace state centralization— Connolly
}Contrasted words: rigid, *stiff, inflexible
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
