Adjective: flexible
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more flexible |
| Superlative | most flexible |
Sample Sentences
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When the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks. [c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:]
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Phocion the Athenian (a man of great severity, and no ways flexible to the will of the people[…] [1625, Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the chapter)”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:]
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Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible. [c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:]
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You can't always get what you want: you need to learn to be flexible.
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a flexible language
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This they foresaw was a Principle more flexible to their Purpose [1735, John Rogers, Nineteen Sermons on various occasions:]
Adjectives inflected like flexible
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle French flexible, from Latin flexibilis, from flectō (“to bend, curve”). Morphologically flex + -ible. See: Latin Adjectives '
flexibilis'.