supple

comparative suppler · superlative supplest

1. Pliant, flexible, easy to bend.

   Global supply chains, meanwhile, have grown both tighter and more supple since the late 1990s—the result of improving information technology and of freer trade—making routine work easier to relocate.

   2011 July 25, Don Peck, “Can the Middle Class Be Saved?”, in The Atlantic

2. Lithe and agile when moving and bending.

   supple joints

   2 more examples

   supple fingers

   My hands are supple and small. A woman in a bread shop once said to me: “You have the hands for making fine little pastries.”

   1918 February (date written), Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Je ne parle pas français”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, pages 82–83

3. figurativelyCompliant; yielding to the will of others.

   a supple horse

   1 more example

   If punishment […] makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

   1693, [John Locke], “§78”, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], →OCLC

4. beveragesSmooth and drinkable.

present singular third person supples · participle present suppling · participle past suppled · past suppled

1. ambitransitiveTo make or become supple.

   The flesh therewith she suppled and did steepe

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 33

   1 more example

   The Stones (a Miracle to Mortal View, / But long Tradition makes it paſs for true) / Did firſt the Rigour of their Kind expel, / And ſuppled into ſoftneſs, as they fell; […]

   1717, John Dryden, “Book I”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 18

2. transitiveTo make compliant, submissive, or obedient.

   They should supple our stiff wilfulness.

   a. 1677, Isaac Barrow, Of contentment, patience and resignation to the will of God

   1 more example

   a mother persisting till she had bent her daughter's mind and suppled her will

   1693, [John Locke], “§78”, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], →OCLC

plural Supples

1. A surname.