docile

What it means

1. Ready to accept instruction or direction; obedient; subservient.

   Harriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful disposition; was totally free from conceit; and only desiring to be guided by any one she looked up to.

   1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], Emma: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC

   1 more example

   With that he dropped his head again, lamenting over and caressing her, and there was not a sound in all the house for a long, long time; they remaining clasped in one another’s arms, in the glorious sunshine that had crept in with Florence. He dressed himself for going out, with a docile submission to her entreaty; and walking with a feeble gait, and looking back, with a tremble, at the room in which he had been so long shut up, and where he had seen the picture in the glass, passed out with her into the hall.

   1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC

   Synonyms: amenable, compliant, teachable, bowsome, buxom, compliant, hearsome, morigerous

2. Yielding to control or supervision, direction, or management.

   Such literature may well be anathema to those, who are too docile and petty for their own good.

   Synonyms: compliant, malleable, meek, submissive, tractable, manageable · Antonyms: perverse, defiant, rebellious, wilful

In a sentence

Harriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful disposition; was totally free from conceit; and only desiring to be guided by any one she looked up to.

1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], Emma: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*deḱ-
2. Proto-Indo-European*doḱ-éye-ti
3. Proto-Italic*dokejō
4. Proto-Italic*dokeō
5. Ancient Greekδιδάσκω (didáskō)
6. Latindoceō
7. Latindocilis
8. Middle Frenchdocile
9. Middle Englishdocyle
10. Englishdocile

From Middle English docyle, from Middle French docile, from Latin docilis, from docēre (“teach”). Compare Portuguese dócil ("docile").