(v.) Capable of plying or bending; readily yielding to force or pressure without breaking; flexible; pliable; lithe; limber; plastic; as, a pliant thread; pliant wax. Also used figuratively: Easily influenced for good or evil; tractable; as, a pliant heart.
(v.) Favorable to pliancy.
Example Sentences:
(1) But it helped that he faced only one opponent, that a pliant local media portrayed support for Sisi as a patriotic duty, and that the election came amid a continuing crackdown on all forms of opposition.
(2) For these sites thin and pliant fasciocutaneous flaps are ideal tissue transfers, and we favour the radial forearm flap which is raised from the distal volar forearm.
(3) In several instances in which preadenoidectomy mechanical obstruction of the Eustachian tube was not demonstrated, the tube appeared to have been made more pliant by the operation.
(4) "For the most part the rewards for acquiescing to GOC demands are risible: pomp-full dinners and meetings and, for the most pliant, a photo op with one of the Castro brothers.
(5) The chancellor, George Osborne, and health secretary Jeremy Hunt would be very happy to devolve these political hot potatoes to pliant and cash-strapped local bodies.
(6) Putin also said outside forces would use intelligence services, the media and non-governmental organisations to destabilise Russia and make it "pliant in deciding issues in favour of the interests of other governments".
(7) "For 40 years the tobacco companies were able to persuade pliant politicians within their grip to tell the public what they wanted them to tell them, and for 40 years the tragedy continued," Gore told ABC TV's 7.30 program from Los Angeles on Wednesday night.
(8) President Asif Ali Zardari has vowed to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida, but cuts an increasingly forlorn figure because he is seen as too pliant to the US in a country where anti-American sentiment is high.
(9) Like maths and music, languages sink in faster and deeper before concerns about sex and jobs besiege the pliant brain.
(10) If one interrupts that sort of pliant texture operatively-unless their is an urgent indication-unprofitable results must be expected, which correspond to orthopedic experiences.
(11) While the fashion press and the beauty industry remain invested in the idea of young women as pliant, affable and terminally anxious about getting boys to like them, real women and girls are fighting back against a culture that persists in trying to present our desires and rebrand our politics as fluffy and marketable.
(12) Those courts once had a reputation for independence, but that changed under Mubarak, who made changes to personnel and to the rules on the appointment of judges which over time left mainly pliant men on the bench, ready either to take “guidance” on cases or to accommodate what they imagined would be the government’s desires.
(13) Critics have accused Erdogan of seeking to diminish the importance of the Turkish parliament and also seeking to make the independent judiciary far more pliant.
(14) Some fear his next move will be to go after Jega, the electoral chief, and replace him with someone more pliant.
(15) The distal flap is thin and pliant due to the small amount of subcutaneous tissue and the fairly long vascular pedicle.
(16) It is a comfortable-seeming thing, flexible without being adjustable, giving without being pliant.
(17) To keep its grip, the regime uses its network of personal and official ties to Britain’s too pliant monarchy, to gullible congressional politicians, and to business and investment leaders overly impressed by its $1tn (£660bn) in cash reserves and its global investment portfolio.
(18) Tolokonnikova has also continued to appeal against her guilty verdict through the Moscow court system, and is one step away from it reaching the country's pliant supreme court.
(19) For several years the Liberal Democrat side of the government, in which I served as Nick Clegg’s national security adviser, staved off the woefully unevidenced plan (hawked around Westminster by pliant ministers since 2008) for new powers to force internet companies to retain highly personal communications data (aka the “snooper’s charter”).
(20) The British media may be attacked for the weakness of its investigative reporting and the salaciousness and dodgy practices of the tabloids, but I would rather err on the side of a profession that is hard to control than one that is pliant.
Plying
Definition:
(p. pr. & vb. n.) of Ply
Example Sentences:
(1) The human alpha 2-plasmin inhibitor gene (PLI) was mapped by in situ hybridization using a genomic DNA probe which contained exons coding for the signal peptide and a portion of the mature protein.
(2) Both are alleged to have plied the Devon girl with drugs, raped her and left her unconscious to drown on Anjuna beach, metres from a bar in which the group had spent the evening drinking.
(3) This lovely coastal route also gives you an excuse to hop on the Skye ferry, which plies its way over the narrows to Kylerhea from the start of this walk.
(4) He plied his trade for 25 years on the pages of this newspaper, and for more than half a century on behalf of the BBC.
(5) Six years ago, officials dismissed as ridiculous allegations that he had shot a drunken Russian bear that had been plied with honey and vodka.
(6) The trend of compliance as a function of the reinforcement angle is discussed for an angle-ply composite of low compliance constituents, as well as the implications for stress-strain behaviour.
(7) Undertreatment for fear of drug toxicity, overtreatment by plying the patient with multiple drugs, and delay in treatment are equally destructive.
(8) Group 19 pneumococci all contained ply; the disease-isolated types of 19F and 19A appeared to show a higher specific hemolytic activity and yield than the nonpathogenic types, 19B and 19C.
(9) In addition, the periodontal variables of PlI, GI, probing depth and the patient's experience of gingival bleeding were recorded and compared between smoking and non-smoking patients.
(10) Nucleotide sequence analysis of the pelY gene disclosed an open reading frame of 1,623 base pairs (PLY).
(11) Samson d’Souza and Placido Carvalho were alleged to have plied Scarlett with drugs, raped her and left her unconscious on the beach, where she subsequently drowned.
(12) Prompted by interest in immunohistochemical reports of prolactin-like immunoreactivity (PLI) in the rat hypothalamus, we investigated and have reported that an immunoreactive and bioactive prolactin-like material can be extracted from the rat hypothalamus.
(13) The Plaque Index (PlI), Gingival Index (GI) and Retention Index (RI), the width of the keratinized gingiva, pocket probing depth (PD) and loss of probing attachment (LA) were recorded on four surfaces per tooth in the entire dentition of the subjects.
(14) The court heard the group had plied five victims with drink and drugs and “passed them around” for sex.
(15) When P2 is further fractioned on a discontinuous sucrose density gradient, approximately 66% of the P2-associated PLI was found in subfractions rich in synaptosomes and poor in myelin and mitochondria.
(16) Using a sensitive and specific radioimmunoassay for rat prolactin and a standardized procedure for subcellular fractionation of neuronal tissue, we have found that 90% of hypothalamic PLI is particulate-bound with only 10% remaining in the S4 or cytosolic fraction.
(17) About the same number of PLI neurons could be detected in the abdominal ganglia of larval and adult flies.
(18) The music and the image had been honed down in the interim – the gear to the archetypal indie look and the music to the almost bubblegum sound which they ply today.
(19) The proportions of B. gingivalis and T. denticola were significantly related to GI, PlI, BI and PD, those of B. forsythus and W. recta to GI, PlI and BI, E. corrodens to GI and PlI, and F. nucleatum to BI.
(20) Email all your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com NEXT WEEK The UK players currently plying their trade at the most obscure overseas clubs.