ruffleable

comparative more ruffleable · superlative most ruffleable

1. rareAble to be ruffled.

   In answer to your Ladyship's other question, in good truth my serenity is not at all ruffled; nor would it be yet, were it ever likely to be. It would be as ruffleable as a porcupine, had it set up its quill yet, for hitherto I am only reading both Bryant and Milles by deputy.

   1866, [Horace Walpole], “2100. To the Countess of Ossory. Berkeley Square, Dec. 22, 1781.”, in Peter Cunningham, editor, The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford (Bohn's English Gentlemans's Library), volume VIII, London: Henry G. Bohn, page 130

   1 more example

   Elsewhere in his correspondence, we witness le Carré pace the room about his notices anyway. His feathers were, it turns out, quite ruffleable. / When his breakthrough novel, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” appeared in 1963, le Carré wrote that the reviews were good with the exception of “some callow ape” who panned it in The Times Literary Supplement.

   2022 December 5, Dwight Garner, “John le Carré: The Spy Novelist Who (Mostly) Kept Quiet”, in The New York Times