DOCILE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does docile mean? 

• DOCILE (adjective)
  The adjective DOCILE has 3 senses:

1. willing to be taught or led or supervised or directed

2. ready and willing to be taught

3. easily handled or managed

  Familiarity information: DOCILE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DOCILE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Willing to be taught or led or supervised or directed

Context example:

the docile masses of an enslaved nation

Similar:

meek; tame (very docile)

sheepish; sheeplike (like or suggestive of a sheep in docility or stupidity or meekness or timidity)

yielding (inclined to yield to argument or influence or control)

Also:

obedient (dutifully complying with the commands or instructions of those in authority)

manipulable; tractable (easily managed (controlled or taught or molded))

Antonym:

stubborn (tenaciously unwilling or marked by tenacious unwillingness to yield)

Derivation:

docility (the trait of being agreeably submissive and manageable)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Ready and willing to be taught

Synonyms:

docile; teachable

Context example:

teachable youngsters

Similar:

manipulable; tractable (easily managed (controlled or taught or molded))

Sense 3

Meaning:

Easily handled or managed

Synonyms:

docile; gentle

Context example:

a gentle old horse, docile and obedient

Similar:

tame; tamed (brought from wildness into a domesticated state)

Derivation:

docility (the trait of being agreeably submissive and manageable)

 Context examples 

You always were my docile daughter.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Gerbils are docile, social creatures and can be housed as pairs or in groups of three.

(Gerbil, NCI Thesaurus)

I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“A more docile, simple folk could not be imagined.”

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

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.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Very docile.

(A28807, Rat Strain, NCI Thesaurus)

Amy is more docile, will make a good companion for Flo, and receive gratefully any help the trip may give her.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)