docile

comparative more docile · superlative most docile

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