Search results
- Dictionarydoc·ile/ˈdäsəl/
adjective
- 1. ready to accept control or instruction; submissive: "a cheap and docile workforce"
Powered by Oxford Dictionaries
The original meaning of docile is more to the point: "readily absorbing something taught." "The docile mind may soon thy precepts know," rendered Ben Jonson, for example, in a 17th-century translation of the Roman poet Horace. Docile comes from the Latin verb docēre, which means "to teach."
DOCILE definition: 1. quiet and easy to influence, persuade, or control: 2. quiet and easy to influence, persuade, or…. Learn more.
Docile comes from Latin root for teaching, docere, so someone docile is easy to teach. A docile student is willing to be taught. A docile animal is easy to handle. If you behave well and do what people tell you to do, you're a docile person. Docile might be a word of praise, but it can also be a criticism of someone for being overly submissive.
A person or animal that is docile is quiet, not aggressive, and easily controlled.
DOCILE meaning: 1. quiet and easy to influence, persuade, or control: 2. quiet and easy to influence, persuade, or…. Learn more.
quiet and easy to control. Definition of docile adjective in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.
Docile definition: easily managed or handled; tractable. See examples of DOCILE used in a sentence.
Promising, ‘hopeful’, forward; apt to learn, docile: chiefly of young persons or their dispositions. Apt to be taught; teachable, docile; submissive to teaching or training, tractable. Able to be schooled or trained; capable of learning or developing. = disciplinable, adj. 1. Obsolete.
"Docile" implies a lack of resistance or aggression and conveys a sense of willingness to conform to authority or direction, making it a valuable quality in various contexts that require cooperation and ease of management.
Easy to manage or discipline; submissive. Yielding to supervision, direction, or management; tractable. From Middle French docile, from Latin docilis, from docere 'teach'. The women he remembered were docile and silent. The next morning she was very docile, but evidently homesick.
