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Adaptable   Listen
adjective
Adaptable  adj.  Capable of being adapted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adaptable" Quotes from Famous Books



... will be able to purchase books at prices within your reach; as low as 10 cents for paper covered books, to $5.00 for books bound in cloth or leather, adaptable for gift and presentation purposes, to suit the tastes ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... along some newly opened line of communication to some remote part of the world, or born under circumstances that give them no opportunity of entering the world of active work. Into this welter of machine-superseded toil there topples the non-adaptable residue of every changing trade; its members marry and are given in marriage, and it is recruited by the spendthrifts, weaklings, and failures of every ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... it will come an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... service of the drama has proved neither derogatory nor futile. This conjunction is the only special feature of Valmiki Pratibha. The pleasing task of loosening the chains of melodic forms and making them adaptable to a variety of ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... he was hailed by many friendly voices. He was well known in that part of the gigantic burrow, and the adaptable young American had become a great favorite, not only with the Strangers, but with his French comrades. Fleury, coming out of a transverse cut, greeted him. The Savoyard had escaped during the fighting on the Aisne, and had rejoined the command of General Vaugirard, ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... from the work I have done and am still doing, that we are developing several varieties of hazilberts as hardy and adaptable to different soils as the pasture hazel is, yet having the thin shell and the size of a European filbert. As to the quality of the kernel of such a nut, that of the wild hazel is as delicious ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... difference was especially noticeable in their speech. There was none of that heavy-tongued enunciation which characterizes even the best-educated colored people of the South. It is remarkable, after all, what an adaptable creature the Negro is. I have seen the black West Indian gentleman in London, and he is in speech and manners a perfect Englishman. I have seen natives of Haiti and Martinique in Paris, and they are more Frenchy than a Frenchman. I have no ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of their personal appearance and looking for their reflection in the water, will melt into any train of fancy. Equally adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks as melancholy, up there ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... a multitude of people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying wages to the younger adults for attendance at schools that would equip them to use the new atomic machinery.... So quite insensibly the council drifted into a complete reorganisation of urban and industrial ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... admits of degrees. But the more the feeling is deep and the coincidence complete, the more the life in which it replaces us absorbs intellectuality by transcending it. For the natural function of the intellect is to bind like to like, and it is only facts that can be repeated that are entirely adaptable to intellectual conceptions. Now, our intellect does undoubtedly grasp the real moments of real duration after they are past; we do so by reconstituting the new state of consciousness out of a series of views taken ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... Even worse, abstract terms, which from century to century have become more abstract and therefore further removed from experience, more difficult to understand, less adaptable and more deceptive, especially in all that relates to human life and society. Here, due to the growth of government, to the multiplication of services, to the entanglement of interests, the object, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... "You. We've all been watching you since you came to live with me, testing you, studying you. You're adaptable, strong, intelligent. You learn fast. We had a little vote tonight, and decided to invite ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgment to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... me out of the corner of his eye quite approvingly at times. He was a widower—a good little man, devoted to his three charming children. They took an immense fancy to me, and I really think I could have got on with him. I am very adaptable, as you know. But it was not to be. He got out of his depth one morning, and unfortunately there was no one within distance but myself who could swim. I knew what the result would be. You remember Labiche's comedy, Les Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon? ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... one of the distinctive and most admired types of its Colonial architecture. Those with pebble-dashed walls which seek to simulate no other building material or form of construction possess the added charm of frank sincerity. Fire-proof in character, pleasing in appearance, and readily adaptable to varied home requirements, they point the way wherever rubble stone incapable of forming an attractive wall is cheaply available. Many modern dwellings in the Colonial spirit are ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... that a nurse for foreign climates, whether tropical, as in the majority of colonial posts, or subject to extremes of heat and cold, such as in Canada, must be physically strong; she should also be of an even temper and philosophical disposition, easily adaptable to climate, conditions, circumstances, and ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... servants, and are extensively used for that purpose today. White families employ them as chauffeurs, butlers, house boys, child nurses, maids and cooks, preferring them to white servants who are not so adaptable to such subordinate ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... squander his savings in the entertainment even of persons unknown to him. And those who are in the habit of attending "slavas" naturally feel that they must have a "slava" of their own. It may also have happened in Macedonia that a traveller has been told by the very adaptable peasants how Saint Nicholas or Saint Alimpija is their house saint, a commitment which the holy one has but lately had thrust upon him. One would therefore do well to look for some other test, and not to follow those people who roundly ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... was not quite such a fool as one might have expected from the fact of his having been content to remain without preferment and only a proportion of his pay for over five years on the frontier. He had hoped to find the fellow adaptable, but this long-limbed, slow-spoken gentleman was not altogether so transparent an individuality as Selpdorf had led himself ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... little leather case out of a drawer, and opening it he exhibited a number of shining instruments. "This is a first-class, up-to-date burgling kit, with nickel-plated jemmy, diamond-tipped glass-cutter, adaptable keys, and every modern improvement which the march of civilization demands. Here, too, is my dark lantern. Everything is in order. Have you ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and sham And I don't want to be forgiven At my age one expects no more than one gets! Avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt others Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests Could not as yet disagree with suavity Cunning, the astute, the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes Depressing to think that I would go on living after death Difficult for a good man to see the evil round him Efforts ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... the League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military and naval programmes and the condition of such of their industries as are adaptable to warlike purposes. ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... mysteriously supported, for after the first shock and disturbance of our arrival we found them cheerful people; indeed, Miss Hope was quite a merry soul. But then she had never known any other life, and human nature is very adaptable. Further, if I may say so, she had grown up a lady in the true sense of the word. After all, why should she not, seeing that her mother, the Bible and Nature had been her only associates and sources of information, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... was a very successful business, "thanks to the initiative of Mr. Freke." And that poor Simonds, who had amply demonstrated his inability to survive, his utter lack of adaptation to his environment, by not being able to be friendly with the great A. and P., went—where all the inefficient, non-adaptable human refuse goes—to the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... one of the most important stages in the development of the steam engine. It was at last the portable machine it remains to-day, and was placed wherever convenient, complete in itself and with the rotative motion adaptable for all manner of work. The ingenious substitutes Watt had to invent to avoid the obviously perfect crank motion have of course all been discarded, and nothing of these remains except as proofs, where none are needed, that genius has powers ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... advancing truth. Its very inflexibility makes it proof against an over-emphasis upon new truth. It has generally turned out in time that the obstinate man of religion was more nearly right than the adaptable intellectual man of fashion. But philosophy, as a critique of science for the sake of faith, should provide the individual religious believer with intellectual enlightenment and gentleness. The quality, orderliness, and inclusiveness of knowledge, finally ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... was even more insistent on a revision, asking how he could absorb so many Negroes when his command was already scheduled to receive 50,000 Philippine Scouts and 29,500 Negroes in the second half of 1947. These two groups, which the command considered far less adaptable than white troops to occupational duties, would together make up about 40 percent of the command's total strength. Although Philippine Scouts in the theater never exceeded 31,000, the command's protest achieved ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... faithful service. Now Venice was, as it is now, a place colluvies gentium. Gaunt, lonely Arabs stalked the narrow streets, or dreamed motionless by the walls of the quay. The city was full of strayed Crusaders, disastrous broken blades, of renegade Christians, renegade Moslems, adaptable Jews, of pilgrims, and chafferers of relics from the holy places. Martin's story spread like the plague, but not (unhappily) to any advantage of King Richard imperturbable in his tower. Martin Vaux then, having drunk up the charity of Venice, shipped for Ancona. There too he met with ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... deal in little but generalities. The Romans must have imitated and developed their Greek and Etruscan models.[91] When Livius Andronicus first fathered palliatae, he must have chosen the New Comedy not only as the type of drama most available to him, but as wholly adaptable to his audiences. When Plautus wrote, he had the machinery already built for him, and he doubtless seized upon the palliata form as the natural medium for the exploitation of his talents. By Cicero's time considerable technical ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... opinion was reflected in the last Congress in the passage of the Cummins-Esch bill, which is the most enlightened and adaptable legislation of the ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... was still to be applied to the new machinery of government. But Americans then, as now, were an adaptable people, with political genius, and they would have been able to make almost any form of government succeed. If the Federal Convention had never met, there is good reason for believing that the Articles of Confederation, with some amendments, would have been made to work. The success of the ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... education disqualifies him as a field hand,—as a manageable factor,—and that consequently there must be a decrease in the amount of money expended for his education or that his education must be directed along lines which will make him more adaptable to management as an economic factor for their sole benefit. The educated Negro is not more desirable now than he was fifty years ago. It is a marvel how the great body of southern white people, a great many of ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love

... of the League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military, naval and air programmes and the condition of such of their industries as are adaptable to war-like purposes. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... it is even more obvious, and for this reason that, looked at aright, it is the faculty of maintaining the general health of the soul, spite of local morbid conditions—a faculty which is strongest in the simpler and more adaptable ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... supplied one of the pulpits here, that of my own church. The Rev. Mr. Simpson was afflicted with a convenient and adaptable indisposition which would not allow him to preach, and I was deputed to fill his place. I knew what a trial it would be, and had carefully written out my sermon, but I am afraid I did not adhere very strictly to the manuscript. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... standards. She simply met each situation as it arose and dealt with it as common sense seemed in that particular instance to dictate. For a thousand years genius has been striving with the human race to induce it to abandon its superstitions and hypocrisies and to defy common sense, so adaptable, so tolerant, so conducive to long and healthy and happy life. Grossly materialistic, but alluringly comfortable. Whether for good or for evil or for both good and evil, the geniuses seem in a fair way at ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... a stiff if stately blank verse, is not merely intrinsic, but both retrospective and prospective. It is not the ordinary "stopped" eighteenth-century couplet at all; nor the earlier one of Drayton and Daniel. It is the "enjambed," very mobile, and in the right hands admirably fluent and adaptable couplet, which William Browne and Chamberlayne practised in the early and middle seventeenth century, which Leigh Hunt revived and taught to Keats, and of which, later than Mr Arnold himself, Mr William Morris was such an admirable practitioner. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... with standards that all have to struggle with in adopting a standard, namely, the tension between a very highly defined standard that is very interchangeable but does not work for everyone because something is lacking, and a standard that is less defined, more open, more adaptable, but less interchangeable. Contending that the way in which people use SGML is not sufficiently defined, BESSER wondered 1) if people resist the TEI because they think it is too defined in certain things they do not fit into, and 2) how progress with interchangeability ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... purpose it was originally erected for. Cooke's, Hengler's, Newsome's, and Sanger's periodical visits are matters of modern date. The new building erected by Mr. W.R. Inshaw, at foot of Snow Hill, for the purposes of a Concert Hall, will be adaptable as ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... were rather proud of the episode, and as for the Frenchmen, they did not mind. The French have always been very adaptable in America. Ninon ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... the description of the husky dog as the "scourge" of Labrador, and would insist that any such wholesale condemnation is a boomerang that returns upon the head of the Labradorian who uses it. For, as the dog is one of the most adaptable of all domestic animals, and is, to an amazing extent, what his master makes him, to bring a railing accusation against the whole race of dogs is in reality to accuse those who ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... the perpetuation of each racial type by inbreeding, with the prospect of an indefinite stratification of society, or for the amalgamation of all cultural and racial elements into a homogeneous whole, and the development of a race more versatile and adaptable than any the world has yet known. The general tendency will undoubtedly be toward amalgamation, but there are decided tendencies in the other direction, as for instance in the "first families of Virginia," and ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner

... Country; but it calls itself Sedgehill High Street as it passes through the place, and so identifies itself with its environment, after the manner of caterpillars and polar bears and other similarly wise and adaptable beings. At the point where this road adopts the pseudonym of the High Street, close by Sedgehill Church, a lane branches off from it at right angles, and runs down a steep slope until it comes to a place ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... let the chance slip through their fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people, more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... Greeks with indifferent success, he learned of the death of his wife and his eldest son from plague, and incontinently returned to Tirnovo, giving up the war and restoring his daughter to her lonely husband. This adaptable monarch died a natural death in 1241, and the three rulers of his family who succeeded him, whose reigns filled the period 1241-58, managed to undo all the constructive work of their immediate predecessors. Province after province was lost and internal ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... and you are welcome to it, if in exchange you will ballast the Juno with samples of your agricultural products; while the treaty is pending, I can experiment in our colonies and make sure which are the most adaptable to the market. ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... know the French language and sympathise with the French temperament. Give the French buyer a ghost of a chance and he will meet you more than half way. Unlike the stolid Englishman he is plastic, adaptable and imaginative. Understanding is a large part of the ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... strange to their race, but peculiarly adaptable, they thrived and multiplied. The hybrid of the Galloway cow and buffalo proved a great success. Jones called the new species "Cattalo." The cattalo took the hardiness of the buffalo, and never required artificial food or shelter. He would face the desert ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... flexible, adaptable and penetrable is the style, and so admirably has the use and proper direction of the imagination been developed by the school of fiction, that every branch of literature has gained from it power, beauty and ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... by no means the last or most crucial stage of our twentieth-century Revolution has now been completed; the old Constitution, which was perhaps the most adaptable and convenient system of government that the world has ever known, is definitely at an end; the powers of an ancient Assembly have been truncated with a violence that in any other land would have spelled barricades and bloodshed long ago; and the road has been cleared, or partially cleared, for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... the height of that movement line drawing went out of fashion, and charcoal, and an awful thing called a stump, took the place of the point in the schools. Charcoal is a beautiful medium in a dexterous hand, but is more adaptable to mass than to line drawing. The less said about the stump the better, although I believe it still lingers ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... rural education means that the school is to abandon its city ideals and standards, except as these are adaptable to rural as well as to city schools, and to develop its instruction with reference to its environment and the local interests and needs. The main efforts of its instruction should be to put its pupils into sympathetic touch with the rural life about them, in which ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst

... solitude. As the wife-mother grows older she is kept in touch with youth, and with the world, while the opportunities for close companionship with the young lessen as a single woman passes forty, unless she makes herself especially adaptable, agreeable, ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Confederacy can be estimated or felt by foreign nations, and the only standing military force which can never be dangerous to our own liberties at home. A permanent naval peace establishment, therefore, adapted to our present condition, and adaptable to that gigantic growth with which the nation is advancing in its career, is among the subjects which have already occupied the foresight of the last Congress, and which will deserve your serious deliberations. Our Navy, commenced at an early period of our present political ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... almost every merit and hardly a fault, becomes what it is by a process very different from that of most writers careful of form. Read Chateaubriand, Gautier, even Baudelaire, and you will find that the aim of these writers has been to construct a style which shall be adaptable to every occasion, but without structural change; the cadence is always the same. The most exquisite word-painting of Gautier can be translated rhythm for rhythm into English, without difficulty; once you have mastered the tune, you have merely to go on; every verse ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... cheap kind of ware unfitted for the hard usage of camp life. The kind manufactured for hotels and restaurants and of sufficient capacity, is more expensive, but will outwear two outfits of the cheaper type and is really more economical in the long run. In the buying do not omit that most adaptable and convenient of all cooking utensils for camp—a wash boiler. Get one that is copper-lined and made of the ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... lights were only on I'd take the risk," she thought; but the lights were not on and it was necessary to pass into the dark interior and into a darker bath-room—a room which is notoriously adaptable for murder—before she could reach ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... eloquent even were he dumb. And he is mellifluous. His voice, while he develops an idea or conjures up a scene, takes on a peculiar richness and unction. If he be describing an actual scene, voice and face are adaptable to those of the actual persons therein. But it is not in such mimicry that he excels. As a reporter he has rivals. For the most part, he moves on a higher plane that of mere fact: he imagines, he creates, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... that her capacity for hatred had increased and also her dangerous qualities, and she would have found all this because God had so ordered life that it is adaptable, making the defensive and offensive qualities of the being capable of increase or decrease in answer to ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... them. That would spoil all the summer they had been planning so happily. To picnic in the hot city with one beloved companion is one thing, to keep house there for one's family is quite another. Mamma was not adaptable, she had her own very definite ideas. She hated a dimly lighted drawing-room, and interrupted Mary's music—to which George listened in such utter content—with cheery random remarks, and the slapping of cards at Patience. Mamma hated silences, she hated town in summer, she ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... dreamily through the purple haze, thinking about Tina of course, and wondering how her piquant archness and Southern beauty would strike his sober people at home. Tina was very quick and adaptable, and he had no doubt she could act to perfection any part he assigned to her, so he was in doubt whether to introduce her as a remote connexion of the reigning family of Italy, or merely as a countess in her own right. It would be quite easy to ennoble the long line of hotel-keepers ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... she will ask me to name a river in Asia beginning with a Z; on my failure to do so she will put a hot plate down my neck as a forfeit, and the children will clap their hands. These games, my dear young friend, involve the use of a more adaptable intellect than mine, and I cannot consent to be a party ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... now become inseparable comrades, cleared and levelled the ground under a mimosa-bush, and, spreading their kaross thereon, lay down to sleep. George Dally, being an adaptable man, looked at the old campaigners for a few minutes, and then imitated their example. Little Jerry Goldboy, being naturally a nervous creature, and having his imagination filled with snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... Entente countries, consigned in armed ships. Coastwise craft were drafted for transatlantic trade; ships under construction for private concerns were subject to acquisition by the Government; every craft afloat adaptable to war service—ferryboats, private yachts, motor boats and the like—were listed for contingent use; and the thousand or more merchant ships of American registry demanded an equipment of guns and ammunition to enable them to run the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... cakes I could bear stoically enough if they would leave my tea alone, or rather if they would allow me a reasonable amount of sugar for it. However, we are an adaptable people and there are ways in which even the sugar paper-dish menace can be met. My own plan, here offered freely to all my fellow-sufferers, provides an admirable epitome of War and Peace. The sugar allowance being about half what it ought to be, I take half of the cup unsweetened, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... fruit, with its curious little box-like capsules, supports a gray or yellow lichen, which has been gently removed from some old wall or tree. A bit of stick or a twig, incrusted with a bright orange-colored lichen, supports a trailing branch of delicate green ivy, the most beautiful and adaptable of all winter foliage. Over this little arrangement is placed a bell glass, to preserve it from dust and the effect of a dry atmosphere; and we know how pleasing to the eye is its varied beauty of form and color, lasting thus, a constant source of pleasure, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various

... I thought was the best man for Secretary of Agriculture. Houston[7], I should say, of the men that I know. You will find my estimate of him in the little packet of memoranda. Van Hise[8] may be as good or even better if he be young in mind and adaptable enough. But he seems to me a man who may already ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... with the ready talent, the adaptable talent, and the facility of this accomplished journalist, and as their acquaintance improved he was let into many of the secrets of success in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... difference was in himself. The sympathetic response to that wild beauty was purely subjective. He could look at the far snows, the bluish gleam of the glaciers, the restful green of the valley floor, with a new quality of appreciation. He could even—so resilient and adaptable a thing is the human mind—see himself engaged upon material enterprises, years passing, his boy growing up, life assuming a fullness, a proportion, an orderly progression that two hours earlier would have seemed to him only a ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... mast was rigged and hoisted foot by foot into place. The electricians had contrived a catchment pool and a wheel in the torrent close at hand—for the little Mulhausen dynamo with its turbinal volute used by the telegraphists was quite adaptable to water driving, and on the sixth day in the evening the apparatus was in working order and the Prince was calling—weakly, indeed, but calling—to his air-fleet across the empty spaces of the world. For a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... that's what has knocked my digestion out—being so infernally jealous of her.—I can't eat a mouthful of this stuff, you know," he added suddenly, pushing back his plate with a clouded countenance; and Lily, unfailingly adaptable, accorded her radiant attention to his prolonged denunciation of other people's cooks, with a supplementary tirade on the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... book of this kind should be suited to the wants of graded and ungraded schools, there evidently being nothing in the one not readily adaptable to the other. ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.

... selected was one in which she herself had acted the part of Puck, and she knew it by heart. She felt reasonably sure that she could help some of the more adaptable scholars to interpret their parts, and, at least, it would be good for them just as a study in literature. As for the audience, they would not be critics. Perhaps they would not even be able to comprehend the meaning of the play, but they would come and they would listen, and the experiment ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... convenient word with a meaning easily adaptable to all sorts of explanations; but if there were no bounds and no end to this explaining by suggestion, we might as well rub out from our suggested slate of life, with a suggested sponge, the whole beautiful world of clear and eternal realities. No, the Christ ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... to the Amiable Amanuensis and Adaptable Author, "you read your stuff aloud with emphasis and discretion, and I'll chuck in the ornamental part. Excuse me, that's my drink," I say, with an emphasis on the possessive pronoun, for the Soldierly Scribe, in a moment of absorption, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... and Aristotle's cypselus is not the swift, but the bank-martlet—"they bring up their young in cells made out of clay, long in the entrance." The swift being precisely the one of the Hirundines which does not make its nest of clay, but of miscellaneous straws, threads, and shreds of any adaptable rubbish, which it can snatch from the ground as it stoops on the wing,[26] or pilfer from any half-ruined nests ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... value where a man has to be able to take the angles of a fort, or to establish the geological formation, say, of the middle island under the Forth Bridge, which was shown by Graves to be readily adaptable for explosion purposes. ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell

... and survived all these difficulties, but it is continuing the selfsame processes to-day. So far as we are able to judge, it is as young and as adaptable as it ever was, and just as ready to "with a frolic welcome greet the thunder and the sunshine" as it ever was in ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... convenient bamboo, this is fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in Bengal an endless supply of this adaptable building material. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... tale, as "coloured up and poetized" in "Lavengro," of Borrow's earliest journeyings and adventures; truly in his case adventures were to the adventurous. Having had all the wild experiences just outlined, small wonder that the strange lad was not very adaptable when, as a free scholar, he came under the rule of the Rev. Edward Valpy at ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... did not get permission to visit M.'s cavalry division that I might observe the French peasantry. I went to give lectures to the men. I did that, faithfully exerting myself to the uttermost, but I did it very badly. I suppose I am not adaptable. Certainly the conditions under which I lectured destroyed any faint chance of my succeeding, ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... essential motives of youth. If the scales were evenly balanced, it might turn them. It is hard at least to see the relations of philosophy to the practical life in any other light to-day. Philosophies are tenuous and adaptable things. We see them used to support opposite causes, and they change color under the influence of strong desires. Bosanquet (91) shows us how Hegel's noble conception of the State, if we but substitute for its central thought of welfare of ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... her hands, and smiled at him with all her dark, mobile face, saying words that were as impulsive as her gesture. Maurice was always vaguely chilled by her outbursts of light-heartedness: they seemed to him strained and unreal, so accustomed had he grown to the darker, less adaptable side ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... over his narrow and uneventful existence, the unwelcome and anguished present, the future that was nothing but a series of blank pages which he had yet to turn in God only knew what bitterness and sorrow. That was the way he gloomily put it to himself. He had still to learn what an adaptable, resilient organism man is. This, his first tentative brush with life, with the realities of pain and passion, had left him exceedingly cast down, more than a little ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... pondering over my adventures, and resolved to buy a pistol when I got to Woodbridge. I remember thinking that I could write quite a book now myself. Already I began to feel quite a hardened pioneer. It doesn't take an adaptable person long to accustom one's self to a new way of life, and the humdrum routine of the farm certainly looked prosy compared to voyaging with Parnassus. When I had got beyond Woodbridge, and had ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... the royal prerogative apparently at its own expense, or as that by which Wycliff's communism is found to be in reality a justification of the policy of leaving things as they are, while St. Thomas's theory of property is discovered as far less oppressive and more adaptable to progressive developments of national wealth, it is noticed that, from the point of view of the socialist, monarchical absolutism is the most favourable form of a State's constitution. For wherever a very strictly centralised system ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... than any others. The Society of Jews will, moreover, busy itself from the outset with their training as artisans. Their love of gain will be encouraged in a healthy manner. Jews are of a thrifty and adaptable disposition, and are qualified for any means of earning a living, and it will therefore suffice to make small trading unremunerative, to cause even present peddlers to give it up altogether. This could be brought about, for example, by encouraging large department stores which provide ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... in the composition of these tremendous music dramas. Wagner realized that to produce such great works, a special theater should be built, of adaptable design. But from where would the funds be forthcoming? While at work on the "Walkuere," the stories of "Tristan" and "Parsifal" had suggested themselves, and the plan of the first was already sketched. He wrote to Liszt: "As I have ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... himself suddenly pitchforked. In spite of the oddity of the situation, and of occasional anxiety when he considered the possibility of Mr. Poodle finding him out, he was very happy. This was not quite what he had expected, but he was always adaptable. Miss Airedale was an enchanting companion. In the privacy of his bedroom he measured himself for a pair of riding breeches and wrote to his tailor in town to have them made as soon as possible. He served the little chapel assiduously, though ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... the death of the animal which had to give up its life blood to cure the other and therefore this method of cure is not adaptable to human beings. Even though an individual, with suicidal intent, would be willing to give up his life for a stipulated legacy to his relatives, the law would ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... a little house in Radnor Square, Westminster, before our marriage, a house that seemed particularly adaptable to our needs as public-spirited efficients; it had been very pleasantly painted and papered under Margaret's instructions, white paint and clean open purples and green predominating, and now we set to work at once upon ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... a government ought to be proportioned to the extent of a country, and the magnitude and variety of its affairs, it follows, as an undeniable result, that this absurd dogma is false, and that the reverse of it is true. As to what is called Monarchy, if it be adaptable to any country it can only be so to a small one, whose concerns are few, little complicated, and all within the comprehension of an individual. But when we come to a country of large extent, vast population, and whose affairs are great, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... brings him face to face with his God, and forbids him to rest in any mere repetition of a familiar form; it requires of the minister a preparation of both mind and soul, and challenges him to spiritual conflict which he dare not refuse, while in addition to all this its very freedom renders it adaptable to all the varying circumstances in which in a land like our own the worship of God must be conducted. It is suitable alike to the stately city church and to the humble cabin of the settler, or to the mission house of the far ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston

... By Mary Frere. Joseph McDonough, Albany, New York. A splendid collection of Hindu folk tales, adaptable for ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... Canada divided itself into two camps: that of Vaudreuil with the colony officers, civil and military, and that of Montcalm with the officers from France. The principal exception was the Chevalier de Levis. This brave and able commander had an easy and adaptable nature, which made him a sort of connecting link between the two parties. "One should be on good terms with everybody," was a maxim which he sometimes expressed, and on which he shaped his conduct with notable success. The Intendant Bigot also, an adroit and accomplished person, had ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... in the future of oil!" he cries, in the midst of a sober statistical letter, "Why! that is as unthinkable as to lose faith in your hands. Oil, coal, electricity, what are these but multiplied and more adaptable, super-serviceable hands? They may temporarily be unemployed, but the world can't go round without them." A man who feels poetry in petroleum suffers from no wistful "desire of the moth for the star." To his full ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... had to be punched up for them by Fulkerson, who did not cease to prize them, and who never failed to punch him up. Beaton being what he was, Fulkerson was his creditor as well as patron; and Fulkerson being what he was, had an enthusiastic patience with the elusive, facile, adaptable, unpractical nature of Beaton. He was very proud of his art- letters, as he called them; but then Fulkerson was proud of everything he secured for his syndicate. The fact that he had secured it gave it value; he felt as if ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Then Penfentenyou, venal and adaptable politician of the type that survives at the price of all the higher emotions, appeared at the window of the house on my right, broken and congested with mirth, the woman beside him, and the child in ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... Shafto was adaptable and soon found his feet. At first his entire time and energies were concentrated on his new job and learning an unaccustomed task; he spent hours on the wharves along the Strand, or across the river at Dallah, standing about in the glare, and dust and blazing sun, amongst struggling, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... to be committed to memory and the many parts of the flower to be distinguished, botany is apt to prove dry and tiresome to the little child, but to study nature by copying the flowers in this marvellously adaptable material is only a beautiful game which every child, and indeed many grown people, will delight in. The form of the flower, its name and color, may, by this means, be indelibly stamped upon the memory, and a good foundation laid ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard

... the branching horns, as in the true deer. In each of these cases specialisation and adaptation to the conditions of the environment appear to have reached their limits, and any change of these conditions, especially if it be at all rapid or accompanied by the competition of less developed but more adaptable forms, is liable to cause the extinction of the most highly developed groups. Such we know was the case with the horse tribe in America, which totally disappeared in that continent at an epoch so recent that ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... that the nest must be sheltered as much as possible from draughts, and be made well in the middle of the cover, as ducks like darkness when they are sitting. Broom is about the best cover you can use for sheltering a nest, and is most adaptable. Practical experience, and one's early failures, teach one more than anything else how a nest should be made, and yet often when you are satisfied that you have selected a most suitable spot for nesting purposes, you will find a duck occasionally ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates

... may be constructed of a pasteboard box and whalebone, for the capture of small birds, and used with good success. The size we have mentioned is adaptable for rabbits and animals of the same size, but is really larger than ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... memory of things seen or heard in dreams, may remain in consciousness. If, later, some similar matter is really met with, the sensation may appear as a past event.[1] This is all the easier since dreams are never completely rigid, but easily modeled and adaptable, so that if there is the slightest approximation to similarity, memory of a dream lightly attaches ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... society. But after the turmoil of the fourth century had subsided, when governments began again to approach more nearly to peace and consequently to justice, and public life once more to be attractive to decent men, both philosophies showed themselves adaptable to the needs of prosperity as well as adversity. Many kings and great Roman governors professed Stoicism. It held before them the ideal of universal Brotherhood, and of duty to the 'Great Society of Gods and Men'; it enabled them to work, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... a pure question of suitability," Mrs Connor had explained anxiously. "Mollie is stronger than you are, and has a more adaptable temperament. She won't feel the little jars as you would, and will get on better with the maid. It is the art of a good general to place his forces in ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... would come to the parsonage, you have to take your medicine. Silver and gold have we none, but such as we have we give to you. And religion's all we've got. You're here, and I'm here. We haven't any choir or any Bible, but parsonage folks have to be adaptable. Now then, Ben Peters, you've got to ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... relief. There are several reasons for regarding this as the least desirable form of relief. In the first place, it is often administered by politicians, and becomes a source of political corruption. But, what is even more important, it is official and therefore not easily adaptable to varying needs. Private charities can undertake a large expenditure for one family, when a large expenditure will put the family beyond the need of charity; but official relief must always be hampered by the fear of establishing a precedent, and inadequate relief is often ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... note that, despite their many resemblances, the two series can be connected only in their far distant beginnings. The pecoran stock became vastly more expanded and diversified than did the camel line and was evidently more plastic and adaptable, spreading eventually over all the continents except Australia, and forming to-day one of the dominant types of mammals, while the camels are on the decline and not far from extinction. The Pecora successively ramified into the deer, antelopes, sheep, goats and oxen, and did not reach North ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... which so many people light-heartedly enter into marriage, the man confident in his ability to "mould" his wife, the woman never doubting her power to "manage" him. It all seems quite simple during the adaptable period of engagement, when romance spreads a veil of glamour over the two people concerned, effectually concealing for the time being the wide gulf of temperament that lies between them. It is only after the knot has been tied that the unlooked-for ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... first tempest of a passion which seemed insatiable has subsided, when the honeymoon of marriage, or of a free union, has passed. Then only is it possible to see if what remains is true love, indifference, hatred or a mixture of these three sentiments, capable or not of becoming more or less adaptable and tolerable. This is why sudden amours are always dangerous, and why only long and profound mutual acquaintance before marriage can lead to a ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... and metaphysical distinctions, and catastrophes. In his opinion the bulk of mankind was not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst they were really happy. But perhaps his political optimism depended most on his belief that institutions, as living things, were indefinitely adaptable, and that the logic of life and progress naturally overcame all opposing arguments. In his ideal state there was room for many mansions, and he did not speak of disaster when American colonists proposed to build according to designs not ratified ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... girl of real life is neither very romantic nor fastidious. She is cheerful, adaptable, too fond of pleasure to be thoughtful, and has a decided inclination towards married life. Its material advantages and status attract her—and, for the rest, she has a vague confidence that everything will come right. Nowhere is the horror of elderly spinsterhood more potent. The influence ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... Gain, Kingsley's Alton Locke—for the novel of religious or social propaganda. And it seemed to me that the novel was capable of holding and shaping real experience of any kind, as it affects the lives of men and women. It is the most elastic, the most adaptable of forms. No one has a right to set limits to its range. There is only one final test. Does it interest?—does it appeal? Personally, I should add another. Does it make in the long run for beauty? ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tale of woe! for the great lindens of our forests are nearly all gone. Too useful for timber; too easy to fell; its soft, smooth, even wood too adaptable to many uses! Cut them all; strip the bark for "bast," or tying material; America is widening; the sawmills cannot be idle; scientific and decent forestry, so successful and so usual in Europe, is yet but a dream for ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... administering it as insane. Perhaps Adelaide might have talked more or less frankly to Janet had Janet not been so obviously in the highest of her own kind of heavens. She was raised to this pinnacle by the devoted attentions of the Viscount Brunais, eldest son of Saint Berthe and the most agreeable and adaptable of men, if the smallest and homeliest. Adelaide spoke of his intelligence to Janet, when they were alone before dinner on the fourth day, and Janet at ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... so adaptable," she continued. "It does not seem to matter into what nation they marry, they seem to assimilate and fit into their places. When this little thing is a duchess, you will see she will fulfil the position to a tee. Berty will be very lucky if he ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... we may add light pockets. His heart soon became somewhat heavier when he discovered that his captain was a tyrant, whose chief joy appeared to consist in making other people miserable. Bill Bowls's nature, however was adaptable, so that although his spirits were a little subdued, they were not crushed. He was wont to console himself, and his comrades, with the remark that this state of things couldn't last for ever, that the voyage would come to an end some time or other, ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... difference and evolution. According to the current applications of the evolution philosophy it is argued that "inheritable characters peculiar to one sex show a tendency to be inherited chiefly or solely by that sex in the offspring."[1134] Women are said to be mentally more adaptable.[1135] This is shown in their tact, which is regarded as a product of their desire to adapt themselves to the stronger sex, with whose muscular strength they cannot cope. If a woman should resist her husband she would provoke him, and her life would be endangered. Passive and resigned ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... look at and elegantly dressed, with an open mind upon whatever topic is discussed, adaptable, available, rich and good-humoured, the American woman as I know her is the last word in worldiness and fashion. In my own country she is not only a popular, but a privileged person, and having started by being what is called "natural," ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... Adaptable Energy. We neither have to give in to our over-insistent desires nor to deny that they exist. Man has a power of adaptation. Just when we seem to run up against a dead wall, to face an irreconcilable conflict, we find ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... winter, a real flower or a fern-spray, by way of model, can always be found in the flower-shops or greenhouses. Practice will stimulate invention and suggest all sorts of devices and ideas. Bits of pretty stuffs will catch your eye as adaptable for use, and oddly tinted silks (the old, faded colors often work in better than fresh ones), patterns on fans, on rice paper, on Japanese pictures—all sorts of things—will serve as material for your fancy. And when your work is done it will be original, and, as such, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... train service, as he feels it necessary to keep in touch with the world by means of the daily newspaper. A number are engaged who want to be married. Here's Mr. Brown, too fat. No move in him. Here's McKay—good man, earnest, but not adaptable, like Finlayson; won't do. Here's Garton—fine fellow, would do well, but hardly strong enough. So what are you to do? I have gone over the whole list of available men and I cannot ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... adaptable creatures and the dispossessed tenant would find quarters elsewhere, he settled himself back to further rest and contemplation. The lair under the ledge was really a better place than he had at first thought it. The leaves were ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... think so. In his case she regarded it merely as a fancy. He had said that he could not sleep on any other side. She had had to turn out of her own room to accommodate him, but if one kept an apartment-house one had to be adaptable; and Mr. Ghoosh was certainly very liberal in ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... and religious habits. After spending some time at Singapore he moved from place to place, but finally decided upon making Ternate his head-quarters, as he discovered a comfortable bungalow, not too large, and adaptable in every way as a place in which to collect and prepare his specimens between the many excursions to other parts of the Archipelago. The name is now indelibly associated with that particular visit which ended after a trying journey in an attack of intermittent fever and general ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... matter, suggesting to Minister Rush, June 20, 1818, a mutual but strictly limited Right of Search.[27] Rush was ordered to give him assurances of the solicitude of the United States to suppress the traffic, but to state that the concessions asked for appeared of a character not adaptable to our institutions. Negotiations were then transferred to Washington; and the new British minister, Mr. Stratford Canning, approached Adams with full instructions in ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... way of successfully using acetylene were overcome by the development of practicable controlling devices and torches, as well as generators. At present the oxy-acetylene process is the most universally adaptable, and probably finds the most widely extended field of usefulness of any ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly

... said the colonel, who was adaptable, and who saw at once that Jarvis was a man of high character. "It's cool on the river and that coffee will warm ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... peculiarly fitted to bring out this perverse quality—drink that blurs all the conventionalities, even those built up into moral ideas by centuries and ages of unbroken custom. The human animal, for all its pretenses of inflexibility, is almost infinitely adaptable—that is why it has risen in several million years of evolution from about the humblest rank in the mammalian family to overlordship of the universe. Still, it is doubtful if, without drink to help her, a girl of Susan's intelligence and temperament would have ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... dear, a man's heart is an adaptable commodity! He 'gives it,' as you say, many times over in the course of his life. He is far more likely to love a wife whose money brings him ease and comfort, than one for whose pretty face ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... also certain that the mechanical motor which shall be found to be most universally adaptable, that is to say, most pliant in accommodating itself to the various lines and to the varying work of the traffic, will be the form of motor which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various



Words linked to "Adaptable" :   flexible, adapt, all-mains, variable, filmable, adaptability, elastic



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