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View synonyms for docile

docile

[ dos-uhl; British doh-sahyl ]

adjective

  1. easily managed or handled; tractable:

    a docile horse.

    Synonyms: obedient, malleable, manageable

  2. readily trained or taught; teachable.


docile

/ ˈdəʊsaɪl; dəʊˈsɪlɪtɪ /

adjective

  1. easy to manage, control, or discipline; submissive
  2. rare.
    ready to learn; easy to teach
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Derived Forms

  • ˈdocilely, adverb
  • docility, noun
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Other Words From

  • doc·ile·ly adverb
  • do·cil·i·ty [do-, sil, -i-tee, doh-], noun
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Word History and Origins

Origin of docile1

First recorded in 1475–85; from Latin docilis “readily taught,” equivalent to doc(ēre) “to teach” + -ilis adjective suffix ( -ile )
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Word History and Origins

Origin of docile1

C15: from Latin docilis easily taught, from docēre to teach
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Example Sentences

His loud, often profane way had been exchanged for a more docile demeanor.

From Time

The harder she looks, the more she sees beneath the “docile surface” of the streets.

Sometimes large dogs need a heavy-duty crate even though their personality is docile.

She is the docile Earth-mother who generously balances and protects the environment and all its inhabitants.

They note that the bowheads, which had initially been docile, started using the sea ice to avoid harpoons.

She also features a more natural face than the one of docile serenity so often bestowed on the Queen of Heaven.

For the first few years, the public was fairly docile in response to the school wars.

The middle classes,” Satyarthi once told the BBC, want “cheap, docile labour.

The tabloids demand that Kate Middleton be as docile as Jane Seymour, whose personal motto was “Bound to obey and serve.”

Spivack, meanwhile, continues to promise her American clients docile, submissive partners.

It is the young animals of these species which are the most social and docile and most approach man in appearance.

It consisted in subjecting some of the docile herbivora more fully to human mastership.

She tried to turn a docile face toward old Kano; but the deepening glory of her husband's look drew her as light draws a flower.

Instead of creating men, a perfect God ought to have created only docile and submissive angels.

We have always been taught to think a nation sound and safe whose women were docile and domestic.

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