Malleable

ˈmæl.i.ə.bəl

adjective

capable of being shaped or easily influenced

The word 'malleable' comes from the Latin word 'malleus', meaning 'hammer'. This reflects the idea that something malleable can be 'hammered' into different shapes or forms.

C O N F E S S I O N S O F A N U G L Y S T E P S I S T E R with oil so as to keep them wet and malleable days at a time.

Gregory Maguire

Confessions of an Ugly Step Sister

Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore

"Indeed! All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact —yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them. Words."

Frank Herbert

God Emperor of Dune

... Because Cyrus (although he used to lecture us, not unmischievously, on the Parts of a Wooman's Body) was simply the most malleable of boys, and would not have dreamed of crossing his mother.

Salman Rushdie

Midnight's Children: A Novel

"Nothing much. You know women—a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours."

Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary