Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a pliant manner; flexibly; yieldingly.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In a pliant manner.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

pliant +‎ -ly

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Examples

  • The soul-sapping spectacle of MPs trooping pliantly through the lobbies to vote for things in which they don't believe or actively disbelieve, or even of which they are blissfully ignorant, must stop.

    A Constitution for the United Kingdom? The Orator 2009

  • Nor are those who pliantly conform to church dicta and notion American.

    Jimmy Dobson's "Focus on the Family" vomits a most despicable message. 2008

  • Is this the start of what we will now experience for years to come - with the BBC just pliantly going along with the Obama PR machine, just as it has been going along with the Labour PR machine for well over a decade here in the UK?

    Archive 2008-12-20 2008

  • Under the pleasurable sense of freedom, thanks to the relaxation of the bit, with stately bearing and legs pliantly moving he dashes forward in his pride, in every respect imitating the airs and graces of a horse approaching other horses.

    On Horsemanship 2007

  • And like Edward, we're drawn for the moment, pliantly, our desires for spectacle engaged at least a little.

    Thinking Theatrically Bardiac 2007

  • And like Edward, we're drawn for the moment, pliantly, our desires for spectacle engaged at least a little.

    Archive 2007-10-01 Bardiac 2007

  • So I think you are simply an irrational bigot, who hates, hates, hates, without any particular distinctions or variation all those who, in your deranged mind, dare to “oppose” your ideologies by not pliantly following the self-serving, hypocrtical, insane creeds of the members of your “in” group of your social circle.

    Think Progress » POLL: Active Duty U.S. Soldiers Disapprove Of Bush Handling Of War, Do Not Support Escalation 2006

  • People who agree pliantly with everything from the top but do their own thing are usually safe. when describing the bobbleheads.

    Are you a bobblehead or a bumblebee? 2006

  • People who agree pliantly with everything from the top but do their own thing are usually safe.

    Are you a bobblehead or a bumblebee? 2006

  • She will join in a dance; and though her limbs move not so pliantly as might be expected of a lady no older than she would be thought, and whose dancing-days are not entirely over, yet that was owing to a fall from her horse some years ago, which, she doubts, she shall never recover, though she finds she grows better and better, every year.

    Pamela 2006

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