Word of the Day for Wednesday February 1, 2006 malleable \MAL-ee-uh-buhl\, adjective: 1. Capable of being extended or shaped by beating with a hammer, or by the pressure of rollers; -- applied to metals. 2. Capable of being altered or controlled by outside forces; easily influenced. 3. Capable of adjusting to changing circumstances; adaptable. His image for his own imagination is the acid, the catalyst, that is mixed in to make the gold malleable, and is then wiped away. --"Nothing is too wonderful to be true," [1]Times (London), June 7, 2000 The natives proved less malleable and far less innocent than the Europeans imagined, so much so that early colonial history is filled with countless stories of monks who met hideous deaths at the hands of their flocks. --Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire I think his request was just a vainglorious way of expressing the basic belief of behaviorism: that children are malleable and that it is their environment, not innate qualities such as talent or temperament, that determines their destiny. --Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption Many current thinkers wish to abandon the idea of a continuous self; novelists have always known that selves are fleeting, malleable, porous. --Mary Gordon, "The Fascination Begins in the Mouth," [2]New York Times, June 13, 1993 Those workers aged over 50 were considered too set in their ways, too expensive to keep on and not malleable enough. --Jill Sherman Whitehall, "Benefit costs force rethink on retirement," [3]Times (London), April 25, 2000 _________________________________________________________ Malleable comes from Medieval Latin malleabilis, from malleare, "to hammer," from Latin malleus, "hammer." References 1. http://www.the-times.co.uk/ 2. http://www.nytimes.com/ 3. http://www.the-times.co.uk/ Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=malleable