flexile

American  

[flek-sil, -sahyl] / ˈflɛk sɪl, -saɪl /

adjective

1. flexible; pliant; tractable; adaptable.

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Other Word Forms

• flexility noun

Etymology

Origin of flexile

First recorded in 1625–35, flexile is from the Latin word flexilis pliant, pliable. See flex ¹, -ile

Example Sentences

The long pale-green chains at the ends of all the branches hang limp and flexile, shaken with every breath of wind, or, falling over other branches, drape and festoon the whole shrub exquisitely.

From The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits by Parsons, Mary Elizabeth

The scrub is mostly dry, while the larger forests are comparatively damp, and often beautiful with flowering trees, small tree-ferns, and flexile climbers.

From Impressions of South Africa by Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount

Staminate catkins.—Two to ten inches long, consisting of a flexile chain of funnel-form bracts, depending one from another; each having six flowers like clappers.

From The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits by Parsons, Mary Elizabeth

Who knows now, but that flexile gracefulness, however questionable at the time of that thirtieth boy of yours, might have been the silky husk of the most solid qualities of maturity.

From The Confidence-Man by Melville, Herman

One is an admirable imitation of Indian corn in tassel, the silky fibres as fine and flexile as can be imagined; another is a group of ostrich plumes, so downy that a zephyr waves it.

From The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 by Various