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adjective
Adaptable  adj.  Capable of being adapted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adaptable" Quotes from Famous Books



... especially adaptable to what is commonly termed a boiled dinner. Occasionally it is advisable for the housewife to vary her meals by serving a dinner of this kind. In addition to offering variety, such a dinner affords her an ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... Nester, Portland, Oregon.—This invention relates to a new scribe hook for weather-boards, which will be generally useful and adaptable to the purposes for which it is intended and to provide an ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... 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, if we except the poor slaves who waited on them, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... half a step behind me, regarding 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, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... 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 he felt it ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... improved she is! That's like all the Americans—they're so adaptable,'—Miss Manisty would think, as she watched her nephew in the evenings teasing, sparring, or arguing with Lucy Foster—she so adorably young and fresh, the new and graceful lines of the coiffure that Eleanor had forced upon her, defining the clear oval of the face and framing the large ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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 ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson

... usefulness of the dog, the writer would pause to take strong exception to 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 breed ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... the manner in which notes, are to be taken will be determined by many factors, such as the nature of individual courses, the wishes of instructors, personal tastes and habits. Nevertheless, there are certain principles and practices which are adaptable to nearly all conditions, and it is these that we have discussed. Remember, note-taking is one of the habits you are to form in college. See that the habit is started rightly. Adopt a good plan ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... 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 ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... hardly be expected that new areas can be opened up in the mind without considerable change and adjustment taking place by reflection in the physical economy. The reaction is likely to be attended by physical distress. But Nature is adaptable and soon accommodates herself to changed conditions, so that any results directly attributable to the development of the psychic centres of activity is not likely to be more than transient, providing that due regard has been given to ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... 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 ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... halt 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 never in life felt the bliss of real love, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... individual, power of the group, power well used, power misspent. The impression is almost stunning. You seem to be watching a community of ants, persistent, untiring, organized, only the ant-hill is a town, and the ants are men physically strong, gluttons for work, resourceful, adaptable, cheerful. Then multiply such ant-hills by thousands and you have China. For not merely is the Chinese the best worker in the world, but he also leads in organization. No Chinese stands alone; behind him is the family, the clan, the guild. He does not confront life naked ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... "having won, you have the greatest of human experiments before you. Your business is to show that the Saxon stock is adaptable ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... incongruities—there's a Carlyleism for you—I love it! I couldn't live without loving it and laughing at it, any more than Beauvayse could get on minus an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, that amatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known it thrummed to the praises of a middle-aged Duchess—quite a beauty still, even by daylight, with her three veils on, and an Operatic soprano, with a mascot cockatoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of the kind that exploit nice boys. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... is very adaptable—you interest yourself in their pursuits, and so deceive them into a false estimate of your worth. Your education—speak not of it; it is but ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... time, in common with other great capitals, felt itself rather final though priding itself on being much more fluid and adaptable than it had been fifty years previously. In speaking of itself it at least dealt with fixed customs, and conditions and established facts connected with them—which gave ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... surmise that she will organize games—guessing games—in which 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 ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... 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 time ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... Vandeloup thought that with his talents and experience of human nature he would soon be able to make a fortune, particularly as he was quite unfettered by any scruples, and as long as he made money he did not care how he gained it. With such an adaptable nature he could hardly help doing well, but in order to give him the start he required a little capital, so stayed on at the Pactolus and saved every penny he earned in the hope of soon accumulating enough to leave. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... becomes, as it were, a specialist. It may take the shape of an instrument which is capable of performing only its one service, like the loom, which is capable of doing nothing except weaving; but even if the tool is somewhat adaptable, like a hammer which can be used in several trades, it is, as it were, stationed in one trade and held, by economic influences, at that one point in the system. The house carpenter keeps his hammer though the cabinet maker ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... organic nature is imperative. The artist should also acquaint himself theoretically with inorganic bodies and with the general operations of Nature, particularly if, as in the case of sound and color, they are adaptable to the purposes of art; but what a circuitous path he would be obliged to take if he wanted to seek laboriously in the schools of the anatomist, the naturalist, and the physicist, for that which serves his ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... Bohemia, whose laws rule the kingdom of Art, and whose government seems a trifle erratic to those who live outside the charmed circle. Students of {33} music, painting, sculpture, and the drama have a code of Etiquette that may be called adaptable; but it does not follow that because a man is an artist he must therefore be deficient in courtesy to women; nor is it yet inevitable that when a girl develops a talent for drawing she should ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... docile at my desk, in the midst of my now well-accustomed pupils in Madame Beck's fist classe; or alone, at my own bedside, in her dormitory, or in the alley and seat which were called mine, in her garden: my qualifications were not convertible, nor adaptable; they could not be made the foil of any gem, the adjunct of any beauty, the appendage of any greatness in Christendom. Madame Beck and I, without assimilating, understood each other well. I was not her companion, nor her children's governess; she left me free: ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... start back with his sure steps, his shoulders swinging with the lithe, adaptable movement of his body; and every step was drawing him nearer to a meeting which would be like no other between them. Soon he would be crunching the glass of the house under that confident tread; in the ecstasy of a new part he would be before the opening he had broken in the barrier ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... distinguished service for the nation. He had spent Sunday, August second, in deep searching of heart and had caught a vision of what the war would mean, and the opportunity that would be presented to an organization that was interdenominational, international, readily mobile, and adaptable enough instantly to meet a great ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... Burr, whom an archangel could not have rebuked. "In the present condition of things all methods are justifiable. Hamilton is great but adaptable. I respect him for that quality above all others, for he is quite the most imperious character in America, and his natural instinct is to come out and say, 'You idiots, fall into line behind me and stop twaddling. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... of course not!" Quimby responded sympathetically and understandingly, as Nattie hesitated for a word that would express her meaning. "They never are very adaptable—old maids, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... institutional 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 ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... kind of work as the cottager does it the more surprisedly do you discover that he recognizes right and wrong methods of doing it; and my own belief is that the necessity which compels the people to be their own servants would not make them so adaptable as they are, were there not, at the back of them, a time-honoured tradition teaching ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... 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 ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... 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 ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... Englishman 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 ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... in that direction. See here!" He took a neat 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 a pair of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... readily adaptable time of life, and William Bannister, after a few days of blank astonishment, varied by open mutiny, had accepted the change in his surroundings and daily existence with admirable philosophy. His memory ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... me deceive thee, reader, into supposing that every adventurer to Australia has the luck of Pisistratus. Indeed, though the poor laborer, and especially the poor operative from London and the great trading towns (who has generally more of the quick knack of learning,—the adaptable faculty,—required in a new colony, than the simple agricultural laborer), are pretty sure to succeed, the class to which I belong is one in which failures are numerous and success the exception,—I mean young men with scholastic ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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 of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... anything its elastic can't express? Comus would be 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, giving ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... feature, and the fact that the internal resistance is low, make this cell well adapted for all forms of heavy open-circuit work. The fact that there is no polarizing action within the cell makes it further adaptable to heavy ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... rich, well drained soil for best development of nuts, and an abundance of moisture, provided the land is well drained. Many of the hickories, however, are so adaptable to various soils that they often thrive in lands that are sandy, and dry, and almost barren. In the latter case, they have to maintain an enormous root system for feeding purposes, and this is detrimental to good bearing qualities. The mocker-nut, pignut, and hairy hickory, perhaps adapt themselves ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... whomsoever he might happen to be addressing, winning over the person in question by striking his particular note and showing that side of his character with which he could best please him. Endowed with the capacity of mystifying and dazzling those around him, exceedingly keen-sighted, adaptable but in reality empty, he knew how to set people thinking and to fascinate others by his lively, unprejudiced and often paradoxical, but entertaining conversation. He was now colder, now more confidential; he knew how to assume cordiality, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... 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 ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... forms found suitable for steam and gas engines are hardly adaptable for experiments in the direction of economising this source of power, one fatal objection in the majority of cases being the corrosive effects of the gases generated upon the insides of cylinders and other working parts. ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... of Greek tragedy, their rhetorical and aphoristic style, their moralizing and their psychology, were all greatly admired. They were believed by the Elizabethans to have been acted, and their murders and violence seemed to warrant such action on the modern stage; though the Elizabethans found less adaptable their use of the chorus, the restriction of the number of persons speaking, their long monologues, and the limitation of the action to the last phase of a story. Kyd modeled his rhetoric on Seneca and retained ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... is well known in plain needlework, is very useful also in embroidery, besides being an important stitch in needlepoint lace. Owing to its construction it is well suited for the covering of raw edges, but it is also adaptable to a variety of other purposes, such as are open or close fillings of leaves and flowers, cut work, and the ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... itself has no value. It is as useless as a reed cut out of an organ or a finger that is severed from a hand. It is not even ornamental or adaptable to any other pur-pose. It is not at all like a piano or a talking-machine, which has a separate existence. It is useful only in proportion to the number of other telephones it reaches. AND EVERY TELEPHONE ANYWHERE ADDS VALUE TO EVERY OTHER ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... book may prove adaptable to various methods and conditions of work. Experience has suggested the brief introductory statement of main literary principles, too often taken for granted by teachers, with much resulting haziness in the student's mind. The list of assignments ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... 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 last to prevail over ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... the credit. Our men are highly specialized, and once outside the walls of Berlin they will find things so different that this very specialization will prove a handicap. The mongrel peoples are more adaptable. Our workmen and soldiers are large in physique, but dwarfed of intellect. The enemy will beat us in open war, and, even if we should be victorious in war, we could not rule them. Either we solve this food business ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... exceptionally intelligent children are fully as likely to be healthy as ordinary children; their ability is far more often general than special, they are studious above the average, really serious faults are not common among them, they are nearly always socially adaptable, are sought after as playmates and companions, their play life is usually normal, they are leaders far oftener than other children, and notwithstanding their many really superior qualities they are seldom vain ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... process is costly both in the plate-making and in the printing. While it gives a rich and uniform impression on the letter paper, and is highly valuable for reproducing pictures and ornate designs, it is adaptable only for special purposes and is not generally regarded as suitable for commercial work. A photogravure plate costs from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents a square inch, or about $12.00 to $50.00 for a letterhead. The printing costs about ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... gained, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, a conception of her own self which was imposed upon her neither by her traditions—she has none; nor by the instructions of her parents—they never gave her any; nor even by her own nature—for it is characteristic of these easily "adaptable" minds that their first instincts are chaotic and undetermined. They are like a blank check, which the will undertakes to fill out. But whatever the will writes upon it, is written in letters that will never be effaced. Action, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... entering San Francisco Bay, Brannan found himself just too late. The American flag was already floating over the Presidio. Eye-witnesses say that Brannan dashed his hat to the deck, exclaiming, "There is that damned rag again." However, he proved an adaptable creature, for he and his Mormons landed nevertheless, and took up the industries of ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... "On the other hand, if a girl marries in Europe as good a man, regardless of his title, as the American she would probably have chosen at home; and, above all—for this is most essential—if she is adaptable enough to change herself into a European, rather than to expect Europe to pattern itself upon her, she will have as good a chance of happiness as comes to any one. Marriage is a lottery in any event. Of course, if it turns out badly abroad, it is worse for her ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... is known to every schoolboy. "Ahn" became the palladium of English philological education. If it no longer retains its ubiquity, it is because something even less adaptable to the object in view ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... truthful disposition and just intellectual perceptions of Auguste,[64] the wit and sweetness of Albertine[65]—I was forgetting Bonstetten, an excellent fellow, full of knowledge of all sorts, ready in wit, adaptable in character—in every way inspiring one's ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... in sound hickory. In fact, when we review the activities of this solid yet elastic wood in the moral, social, and economic phases of Back Country life, we are moved to wonder if the pioneers would have been the same race of men had they been nurtured beneath a less strenuous and adaptable vegetation! The hickory gave the frontiersman wood for all implements and furnishings where the demand was equally for lightness, strength, and elasticity. It provided his straight logs for building, his block mortars hollowed—by fire and stone—for corn-grinding, his solid ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... 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 anarchy ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... an unnatural food for man and condemn its use on moral grounds. It is difficult to decide what is natural, for we find that man is very adaptable, being able to live on fruits in the tropics and almost exclusively on flesh food, largely fat, in the arctic regions. In nature the strong live on the weak and the intelligent on the dull. There is no sentiment in nature. In her domain might, physical or mental, makes right. Sentiments of right ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... 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 ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... fast disappearing; visitors have discovered how adaptable it is to home decoration, and the dealers in Cairo eagerly buy up all that can be obtained to be converted into those many articles of Arab furniture with which we are now ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... 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 we cannot be sure that the disappearance was not witnessed, perhaps caused, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... proclamation warned all Dutch subjects under penalty against exporting "arms, ammunition, or other war materials to the parties at war [to include] everything that is adaptable ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell

... be recognized that such work is a big job in itself and cannot be successfully conducted as an appendix of the day school. It is worth doing well, or it is not worth doing. It needs an organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to quickly make adjustments to unusual and unexpected conditions. It needs the supervision of a competent director who can devote to it all his time and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only know how and what to teach, ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz

... night. The doctors tell me 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 toxic ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... low-water marks in the mud, and the 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 ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... in the railroads were so divergent, it still was not easy to determine how the public was to be safeguarded. At first, some general conditions such as maximum rates were inserted in the laws and charters; but these were not adaptable to changing conditions and, for lack of administrative agents, could not be enforced. Some early efforts at state ownership were disastrous. The old law of common carriers gave to individual shippers an uncertain redress in the courts for unreasonable rates; but the remedy ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... his calculations and Katherine Rodney restored to her own. So long as he could not possibly win Constance he figured that he might just as well devote himself to the girl he was virtually engaged to marry. Freddie's was a convenient and adaptable constancy. Miss Fowler out of sight was also out of mind; he descended upon Katherine with all of the old ardour shining in his eyes. It was soon after Miss Rodney's conference with her mother, and the young lady was off for ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... the white community; but lest some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn with some legal prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts itself readily to circumstances; and being thus adaptable, there is ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... body and mind we find that play illustrates the principle of Organic Selection explained above. It makes the young animal flexible, plastic, and adaptable; it supplements all his other instincts and imperfect functions; it gives him a new chance to live, and so determines the course of evolution in the direction which the playful animal represents. The quasi-social ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... 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 ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... and first-rate off-stream treatment is going to have to be the main way of handling them. Even where wastes can be collected easily for treatment, however, as in industry or in sewered populated areas, it may take a good many years to work out varied forms of advanced treatment adaptable to different sets of circumstances, at prices that communities can afford to pay—and a willingness to pay what can be paid is going to have to be a part of the long clean-up job ahead. Undoubtedly continuing research will work ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... 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 ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... melodic modes to the 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 treatment completely ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... preferable to kerosene, electricity is with equal certainty preferable to gas. It is more adaptable, is in many places quite as reasonable in cost, and is cleaner and safer. In numerous country communities where gas is not to be had electricity is available, as frequently a large region embracing several towns is supplied from a single ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... is undoubtedly the most plastic part of the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... Possibly it is because of the mixture of Asiatic blood in the Bulgars. The Bulgar, slow, heavy, inclined to be morose and suspicious of all strangers, does not give so pleasant a first impression. The Serb is light-hearted, inclined to be frivolous, and is much more adaptable. Give the Bulgar a patch of ground and he will immediately plant vegetables; the Serb will devote at least some of it to flowers. Then will come the Greek trader and make a fatter profit out of the product of their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • 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 have ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... he. "I'll get used to it." With an attempt at the manner of the humorous philosopher, "Man is the most adaptable of all the animals. That's why he has distanced all his relations. I didn't realize how much our association meant to me until you set me to thinking about it by telling me you were going. I had been taking you for granted—a habit ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... could succeed in getting adopted three amendments which they regarded as vital to the success of the measure: (1) A new financial plan; (2) the completion of land purchase, and (3) such concessions as would win the consent of Ulster. But our reward for thus endeavouring to make the Bill adaptable to Irish requirements and acceptable to the whole of Ireland was to be dubbed "factionists" and "traitors" by the official Irish Party, who never once during three years' debates in Parliament made the slightest ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... profusion of fiction; how in the attempt to become more interesting without becoming journalistic it has extended its operations to cover a wider and wider arc of human appeal. It has both lost and gained in the transformation, but it has undoubtedly proved itself adaptable and therefore alive. This is not an argument that the reviews should become magazines and that the old-line magazine should give up specializing in pictures and in fiction. Of course not. It is simply more proof that vigor, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... he began, "is now thirty-six. She has had thirty-six years of luxury, of merely raising her finger and receiving highly trained service. She is not a young girl who might, being more adaptable and buoyed up by romance, settle down to a new order of life; she is too used to the luxuries I have been able to give her, servants, carriages, horses, travel, fine clothes—" he enumerated them all with distinctness, giving each item a lengthy second before going on to his conclusion. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... for by the large number of teachers and of pupils involved. The decisive factor in this matter is that the school refuses to grant credit for the work pursued. The failure for a semester seems to be a more adaptable unit in this connection than the subject-failure for a year. However, it necessitates the treatment of the subject-failure for a year as equivalent to a failure for each of the two semesters. Two of the ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien

... 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 ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... throughout all classes in the country the greater is the possibility of maintaining our lead. It is also important to maintain, so far as technical education can give it, skill in carrying out methods already established and improving them, and also in making the worker more adaptable to new conditions and altered circumstances instead of being a mere machine able to do one class of work only, and adhering simply to the one rigid method which he may have learnt. But knowledge and training are not all that is wanted. It is essential ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... automobile made it extremely easy for the American manufacturer to turn it out either as a left-handed or a right-handed car, and so adapt it either to the Continental or to the British rule of the road. No English cars were so adaptable. We British suffered much from our insular rule of the road, just as we suffered much from our insular weights and measures. But we took a perverse pride in such disadvantages. The irruption of American cars into England was ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... extraordinarily quick," he was saying, "the most adaptable people since the ancient Greeks, whom they resemble in some ways. But they are more superficial. The intellect races on ahead, but the heart ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... was by nature adaptable to her surroundings, she followed Marian's example and arranged her work-basket tidily and then put it away in its place, though down at the Hurly-Burly it would never have occurred to her to do so, and nobody would have set ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... sail with the proverbial light heart and light pair of breeches, to which 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, and that men ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... their relaxed figures with genuine benevolence. There were the friends for whom he cared most, and he felt sure the young Englishman also would become an addition. Grosvenor was full of courage and he had already proved that he was adaptable. He would learn fast. The hunter had every reason to be satisfied with himself ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Man is to survive, he must be adaptable, as any life form must. But that's not enough; he must adapt faster than the competing forms. And on new ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker

... 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

... fire one at him from here, anyway," suggested Irene, adaptable as her sex is to contemporary ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... transformed into one huge camp of wounded. All adaptable buildings—halls, cafes, school-rooms—have been rapidly commandeered for hospitals. Sometimes there are beds, more often rudely made straw mattresses, for little Servia, worn out by two hard wars, is ill-equipped ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... his way of speaking irritated Malipieri. The Baroness had been better educated than her husband from the first; she was more adaptable and she had really learned the ways of the society she loved, but the Baron was never far from the verge of vulgarity, and he ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... circumference, and about 7/8 of its length. Another piece of the same diameter pipe cut lengthwise into thirds forms a cover for this pot. We then have a cheap, substantial pot, non-warping, with a minimum tendency to scale, but the pot is difficult to seal tightly. This idea is especially adaptable when long, narrow ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... roving propensities and arrange to have him captured and brought prisoner to England; a scheme which Henry apparently approved, but fortunately for his own credit referred to his Council, whose consciences were less adaptable. In October, the English indulged in a week's invasion of Scotland, and the Scottish King would have responded in kind but that his ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... Nancy Lee is an attractive little craft when finished and it is capable of attaining considerable speed. It is really designed after the cruising type of motor-boats. This type of boat is particularly adaptable for simple model-making, owing to the elimination of awkward fittings. The power machinery is of very simple construction and presents ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates

... audience, and a substantial remuneration for their performance. Some writer has described Melbourne, as Glasgow with the sky of Alexandria; and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon. In spite of the dismal prognostications of Marcus Clarke regarding the future Australian, whom he describes as being "a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship," ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... of war were lacking. Weckerlin directed the choruses and I acted as the accompanist at the rehearsals. Love of art sufficed us, but the singers and instrumentalists were not satisfied with that in the absence of all emoluments. If Seghers had been adaptable, he might have secured resources, but that was not his forte. Meyerbeer wanted him to give his Struensee and Halevy wanted a performance of his Promethee. But this was contrary to Seghers's convictions, and when he had once made up his mind nothing could change him. Nevertheless he did ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... a pattern which may be used for either a Wilton or Axminster rug, or for mats, sachet cases, cushion or box covers, or cross-stitch embroidery on burlap, or silk, or wool canvas. The patterns given on pages 120, 125, 130, and 134 will be found adaptable for ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... twenty Rhodes Scholars whom Hoover hurriedly recruited from Oxford at the beginning of the work was the pioneer lot. All of these two hundred were selected for intelligence, honor, discretion, and idealism. They had to be able, or quickly learn, to speak French. They had to be adaptable and capable of carrying delicate and large responsibility. They were a wonderful lot and they helped prove the fact that either the American kind of university education, or the American inheritance of mental and moral qualities, or the two combined, can justly be a ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

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

... books, according to any set system, or according to subjects upon the shelves of a library, is not easy, and for many reasons it is not worth attempting. Unless the library is a very large one, say, ten to twenty thousand volumes, with ample and adaptable shelving, it is not to be desired. The main difficulty in shelf classification lies in the fact that books on similar and kindred subjects are issued in all sizes. There are books on Furniture, for instance, in folio, in quarto, and in octavo. When shelf ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... indeed. As for the company itself there could be no question that it was a good one. No one expected acting in grand opera, no one expected that the performers would be physically adaptable to their parts. The voice! The voice was all. Even Agnes admitted that it was a splendid thing to be a patron of the fine arts; but Bobby, in his profound new wisdom and his thorough conversion to strictly commercial ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... to us in large numbers the people of the Pacific Coast should demand the exclusion of the Japanese immigrants. While Japan has not the immense population of China and while the Japanese are perhaps a more adaptable people than the Chinese, still it would seem that in the main the people of the Pacific Coast are justified in their fears of the results of a large Japanese immigration. For the peace of both countries and of the world, therefore, it is to be hoped that the flow of Japanese ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... away from them, socialism could provide another which men of this special type would find equally stimulating. Is human nature in general, and the nature of the monopolists in particular, sufficiently adaptable to admit of such a change as this? The socialists answer that it is, and in making such an assertion they declare that they have all the facts of scientific sociology at the back of them. The unscientific ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... But as bears were 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 so ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... is well known. At the end of a pleasant evening when there had been music—in which James himself was the first connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, some say, the national lilt, the rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so adaptable to mirth—"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group within. The King was taken ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... 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, etcetera, would fain have slept in one of the waggons above the baggage—as ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... the dreadnought of the air is expected to be the feature of 1918. With 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 when the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep footmen clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... 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 clearness. Nothing has aided more ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... the moon and yet be guided by others into the mundane paths of practical common sense. There was at the moment an abnormal dislocation between public opinion and actual possibilities. The harsh amalgam of democratic politics and war seemed to demand an adaptable Premier; he was ex-officio and par excellence the pivotal man, and circumstances required a liberal amount of lubrication and elasticity to ease the friction and avert ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... 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 his arms. I saw his mouth open and shut, he hollowed his hands round it, but the churr of the motor ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling



Words linked to "Adaptable" :   pliant, pliable, adaptability, flexible, adapt, universal



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