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Adaptableness   Listen
noun
Adaptableness, Adaptability  n.  The quality of being adaptable; suitableness. "General adaptability for every purpose."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adaptableness" Quotes from Famous Books



... adaptability and decorative effect. Development of historic writing and lettering and its influence on type design. Classification of general forms in lettering. Application of design to lettering. Drawing for reproduction. Fully illustrated; review questions; ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... correspondencies of the human organism in its multitudinous ramifications. Then all the vast ceremonial of this body passed in review before her mind, each rite symbolic of some function, physical, mental and spiritual, and she marveled at the adaptability of the parts to each other and then ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner

... power, his ability to bend men and things to his iron will, and their awe of him increased proportionately. To the isolated community of obscure persons Symes seemed very nearly omnipotent. They had no criticism to make of the law's adaptability to Symes's needs; it was enough for them that Crowheart was in the limelight and the influx of settlers ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... these was the Spiritual Thunder and Storm Booklet, produced in 1731 by a Protestant scholar, Stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred pages of prayer and song, "sighs for use when it lightens fearfully," and "cries of anguish when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a wonderful adaptability to all possible meteorological emergencies. The preface of this volume is contributed by Prof. Dilherr, pastor of the great church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, who, in discussing the Divine purposes of storms, adds to the three ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... his progeny almost limitless adaptability to changing conditions, provided the changes ...
— Keep Out • Fredric Brown

... of popular favor when the railroad in 1830, after a half-century of slowly accumulating technical improvements, burst into view as a demonstrated success as a means of transportation.[2] The railroad excels in adaptability any other agent of transportation; it can go over mountains or tunnel through them. It is markedly superior in certainty; it may be blocked for a day or two by floods and snows, but it suffers no seasonal stoppage ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... superficial observation, the uses and functions of their entire organism, yet science has been a tolerably faithful interpreter of cause and effect, and has not failed to recognize those organic qualities, and the structural adaptability of the African race, which qualify it for its mission as the representative of barbaric fury and degradation, and the type, in human form, of that chaotic element of self-annihilation, which nature has kindly ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... their advocates are thought to have the advantage of adaptability to changing conditions and to be more conformable to the theory of the consent of the governed ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... intangibility, has need of every means that may serve to define and illuminate its design; and hence the superior frequency and perfection of the Three-Part form, which, in its Third Part, provides for and executes this Return to the beginning. Its superiority and greater adaptability is fully confirmed in the practice of composition; the number of Three-Part forms exceeds the Two-Part, in musical literature, to an almost surprising degree; and it may therefore be regarded as the design peculiarly ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... latest dig. Adaptability to a varied diet is an element of well-being in the animal, a factor of prime importance for the extension and predominance of its race in the bitter struggle for life. The most unfortunate species would be that which depended for its existence on a diet so exclusive that no ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... Israel, in whose hand will be the destiny of the world. It is the lion of languages. It will grow anywhere, and by reason of its tenacity when once it gets a foothold it abides. It is peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, it sounds the death-knell ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... present day, the House of Vipont has gone on prospering and progressive. It was to the aristocracy what the "Times" newspaper is to the press. The same quick sympathy with public feeling, the same unity of tone and purpose, the same adaptability, and something of the same lofty tone of superiority to the petty interests of party. It may be conceded that the House of Vipont was less brilliant than the "Times" newspaper, but eloquence and wit, necessary to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... else, till, after the lapse of ages, he had developed invention and adaptability. Besant and Rice, in "Ready-money Mortiboy," speak of Divine Discontent as the motive power impelling man to progress. Not till the chalk and the limestone shelters were stocked, and could hold no more, would men be driven to invent for themselves other dwellings. The first men being sent into ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... ancestors to settle and conquer in lands so distant and diverse as Russia and Sicily, Syria and North America, but enabled him to infuse new life into the countries he conquered. Further, he still retained that adaptability and power of assimilation which is characteristic of peoples in a primitive stage of civilisation. With a wonderful instinct he fastened on to the most characteristic and strongest features of the different nations he was brought in contact with, developed them, gave them ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... curved lines and smoothness, in this perfect adaptability of means to end, there is the spirit of art showing itself, not with colour or crayon, but working in tangible material substance. The makers of this plough—not the designer—the various makers, who gradually put it together, had many things to consider. The ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... Its abundance and adaptability did much to change the nature of their diet as well as to save them from starvation. The colonists learned from the Indians how to plant, nourish, harvest, grind, and cook it in many Indian ways, and in each way it formed a palatable food. The Indian pudding which they ate so constantly ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... characteristic of David Willet that no matter what the situation he always made the best of it. His mind was a remarkable mingling of vigor, penetration and adaptability. If one had to wait, well, one had to wait and there was nothing else in it. He sank down in the little cove in the cliff and rested his back against the stony wall. He, Robert and Tayoga filled it, and his moccasined feet touched the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... no prompting on his part; and, without her own mother from the age of three, Jasmine had grown up self-willed and imperious, yet with too much intelligence to carry her will and power too far. Infinite adaptability had been the result of a desire to please and charm; behind which lay an unlimited determination to get her own way and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... if defect it might be called. In the larger affairs of his unhallowed business he displayed a mental adaptability, a talent to think quickly and shift his tactics to meet the suddenly arisen emergency, which was the envy of lesser underworld notables; but in smaller details of life he was prone to follow the line of least resistance, which is true of ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... out money like domestic champagne to polish their adopted one. Milliners, dancing masters and private tutors got it. Miss—er—McRamsey was grateful, loving, and tried to forget Hinkle's. To give ample credit to the adaptability of the American girl, Hinkle's did fade from her memory and speech ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... passes that does not bring a similar call to our employment office. While our plant, as plants go, is not large, we always have a number of men working with us who are fitted by experience and adaptability to do other work than that which they are hired to do. Such men are invaluable to know about, especially when an operator stays away for a day or perhaps a week and the shop is full of orders. Once it was a problem to find the right man immediately. A few additions to our employment ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... dyspepsia known as the Puritanical conscience was his by right of inheritance. In his nature there was no flexibility, no instinct for harmonious adaptability to any surroundings excepting those among which he had been born and in which he intended to end his days. Temperamentally he was of a fast colour. The leopard cannot change the spots and neither could he change his; nor did he will so to do. In short he was what he was, just ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... him with an affectation of patronage, as if she had lately become uneasily conscious of being in a country where there were distinctions of class. She was young, pretty, and tastefully dressed; the national feminine adaptability had not, however, extended to her voice and accent. Both were strongly Southwestern, and as she began to speak she seemed to ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... went on, "whom I could make over as I have made her over. They have not the adaptability—the temperament. There was one whom I could have transformed. But I was not allowed. She was little and blonde and the wife of a clergyman; she looked like a saint—-and she should have worn straight things of clear green or red, or blue. But she wore black. I've sometimes wondered if she ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... between being a guest at a country house and a guest on a private car or a yacht, is that you put to a very severe test tour adaptability as a traveler. You live in very close quarters with your host and hostess and fellow guests, and must therefore be particularly on your guard against being selfish or out of humor. If you are on shore ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... that he believes it. If he is froward with the froward, so he is just with the just, and the more sympathetic and susceptible his nature, the more amenable is he to temporary influences. It is this chameleon adaptability that passes for hypocrisy. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... volumes, by an Irish J.P., who appears to possess in perfection the fun, frolic, shrewdness, and adaptability to circumstances so remarkable among the better specimens of his countrymen.... The second volume is entirely devoted to the best description of California and its 'diggings,' its physical features, its agriculture, and the social condition of its motley population, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various

... Owing to the wonderful adaptability of Lake Tahoe, and the lakes and brooks of the surrounding region, to fish life, several other well-known varieties have been introduced, all of which have thrived abundantly and now afford opportunity for the skill of the fisherman and delight the palate of the connoisseur. These are ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... quick wit and ready adaptability of her race, she did see; and as she adored her young mistress above any one on earth, she was only too willing to please her; and, too, the occasion had its charms ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... also that the Senator made the acquaintance of Mr. Washington Hawkins, and was greatly taken with his innocence, his guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... training, his performance, and his career field preference, the board recommended him for reassignment in a specific duty field. Although Edwards had promised that the screening boards would also judge each man's "adaptability" to integrated service, this requirement was quickly dropped by Davis and his fellow board members.[16-23] In fact, the whole idea of having screening boards was resented by some black officers. Zuckert later admitted that the screening may have been a mistake, but at the time it ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... the blanks distributed, and which were quite generally answered. This prompts the suggestion that before planting commercially or on a large scale one should personally conduct a series of experiments on land designed for use to test its adaptability for the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... where, under the antiseptic influence of an almost eternal frost, many of them have been preserved as entire as at the fatal moment they sank under the rigors of external conditions no longer fitted for their existence. It has been attempted by some to prove the adaptability of these animals to the present conditions of the northern hemisphere; but so untenable in every phase is this opinion, that it would be sheer waste of time and space to attempt its refutation. That they may have migrated northward and southward with the seasons is more than probable, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... expect that the offspring of unbroken sire and dam can be as easily educated as a Retriever whose parents before him have been properly trained. Inherited qualities count for a great deal in the adaptability of all sporting dogs, and the reason why one meets with so many Retrievers that are incapable or disobedient or gun-shy is simply that their preliminary education has been neglected—the education which should begin when the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... in the localities in which he had, by circumstances, been forced to reside. His plan of operations must, therefore, have been largely modified and adapted as time went on, and as his finances allowed. To both, therefore, credit is due for the adaptability evinced under conditions not always congenial or conducive to the pursuits ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... meat he would moisten in the same way. Now this involved a good deal of mental intuition, and I often wondered whether he found out that water would remove the sand by accident, or by a process of thought; in either case, it showed cleverness and adaptability. So also with the processes of opening the door of his cage. He had first to prize up the latch with his beak to a certain height, and then by sudden sharp pecks send it clear of the hasp; then descend to the floor, and by straight pecks send the door open. If he could not get the door ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... midnight. But morning comes hot and tiresome, and the never-ending work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two or three times in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each other, and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner stuff and to possess more adaptability. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... hundred pieces under the direction of Theodore Thomas. In 1874 he made a metrical version of "The Legend of Don Munio" from Irving's "Alhambra," and set it to music for a small orchestra and chorus. Its adaptability to the resources of the vocal societies of smaller cities has made it one of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... reconciled to his dress, or want of dress—though, to be sure, a coat of paint and a blanket cannot, at the best, be regarded as more than a passably efficient hot-weather costume. With the easy adaptability of boyhood, Andrew Kerr had ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... wheat-lands of Dakota. New England and New Jersey farms, generally speaking, no longer attempt the culture of grains, but (when driven out of that culture by the great railway lines which have opened up the West) they have arranged themselves in a scale of adaptability for stock, grass, fruit, dairy, or vegetable farming; and have thereby given greater profits to their owners than the same land did under the old regime. Even on lands where any grain can still be grown, corn, buckwheat, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... people forget even important events. If a blue sun arose to lighten the world instead of a yellow one, after nine days of wonder, man would settle down quite comfortably to a cerulean existence. Such is the wonderful adaptability ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... changing experiences of their daughters, who are willing to modify ill-fitting social conventions into rules of conduct which are of actual service to their children in their daily lives of factory work and of city amusements. Those mothers, through their sympathy and adaptability, substitute keen present interests and activity for solemn warnings and restraint, self-expression for repression. Their vigorous family life allies itself by a dozen bonds to the educational, the industrial and the recreational organizations of the modern city, ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... SHAW. Origin, history, distribution, characteristics, adaptability, uses, and standards of excellence of all pedigreed breeds of cattle, sheep and swine in America. The accepted text book in colleges, and the authority for farmers and breeders. Illustrated. 371 pages. 5 x 7 ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... discharged two footmen. This action may have shortened his life, but I believe it to be a fact that when he lay dying, some fifteen years later, he said to his heir, 'Discharge two more.' Such enlightenment and adaptability were not to be wondered at in so eminent a Whig. As time went on, even in the great Tory houses the number of retainers was gradually cut down. Came the Industrial Age, hailed by all publicists as the Millennium. Looms were now tended, and blast-furnaces stoked, by middle-aged men who ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... find the original of Ligorio's masterpiece in some ancient building, whereas the perfect adaptability of its plan to new requirements proves that it could never have been produced earlier than the Renaissance. It has been well epitomised as the "day-dream of an artist who has saturated his mind with ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... weighed upon him; but resignation to the divine will sustained him.[3] This scene, owing to the instinctive art which regulated the compilation of the synoptics, and often led them in the arrangement of the narrative to study adaptability and effect, has been given as occurring on the last night of the life of Jesus, and at the precise moment of his arrest. If this version were the true one, we should scarcely understand why John, who had been the intimate witness of so touching ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... to that of a runner who falls,—he is comic for the same reason. The laughable element in both cases consists of a certain MECHANICAL INELASTICITY, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being. The only difference in the two cases is that the former happened of itself, whilst the latter was obtained artificially. In the first instance, the passer-by does nothing but look on, but in the second ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... secret of her early condition than Haney, and the colored man enjoyed serving them. He seemed perfectly happy in advising, cautioning, directing them, and was deeply impressed with their powers of adaptability—was, in truth, developing a genuine affection for them both. He was a lonely little man, Bertha had learned, with no near kin in the States, and the fact that he came from an Island in the sea made him less of a "nigger" to the Captain, who had the usual amount of prejudice ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... usually of a more purplish color. The distinct difference between the two commercial varieties of sulphide should not be overlooked, as it allows the worker to modify the process usefully when dealing with papers differing (as all papers do) to a slight extent in their adaptability to sulphide toning. The purer form has certainly much better keeping properties than the other, but either, if made up in 20 per cent solution, keeps for a month or two at least—which is enough for all purposes. The chief difference ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant

... just this adaptability of metre to mood, an adaptability due to an intensive study of metre, that constitutes an important element in Pound's technique. Few readers were prepared to accept or follow the amount of erudition ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot

... find in "Mark" any serious stumbling-block. In fact, persons of all the categories admitted to salvation by Justin, in the middle of the second century,[7] could accept "Mark" from beginning to end. It may well be, that, in this wide adaptability, backed by the authority of the metropolitan church, there lies the reason for the fact of the preservation of "Mark," notwithstanding its limited and dogmatically colourless character, as compared with the Gospels of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... of the Normans who stood with William at Hastings, and scarcely to any of their children. Yet this result was predetermined by the stubborn tenacity and numerical superiority of the conquered people and by the easy adaptability of the Norman temperament. Racially, and to a less extent socially, intermarriage did its work, and that within a very few generations. Little by little, also, Norman contempt and Saxon hatred were softened into tolerance, and at last even ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... 1855 John Hill Burton married Katharine Innes as his second wife. He had by that time become accustomed to combine office with literary work, and, with the extraordinary activity and adaptability of his intellect, found them helpful to each other. About the time of his second marriage he conceived the project of his complete 'History of Scotland,' and directed his studies and investigations towards its execution, continuing, as his manner was, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... Congress. They are based upon the just principle that appointments to the service should be made only after a practical test of the applicant's fitness, that promotions should be governed by trustworthiness, adaptability, and zeal in the performance of duty, and that the tenure of office should be unaffected by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... gracefully and courageously resigns it to those who can wear it with profit. But honour where honour is due! The English girl generally shows more sense of fitness in the dress for walking and travelling; she, consciously or unconsciously, realises that adaptability for its practical purpose is essential in such ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... into the discussion of the endogamous and exogamous types of society. Whatever may have been the origin of exogamy, the survival of the exogamous type in progressive societies may easily be explained on the ground of superior adaptability, variability and plasticity, which enables such societies to survive a change of environment while the more rigid structure of the endogamous ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner

... her person; pleased with her wit; pleased that money should have been offered to him, and pleased that for the present he should have declined it. He liked her dress and her willingness to change any portion of it at his slightest hint. He liked her activity and power of walking, and her general adaptability to himself. He was pleased with everything. But she had the ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... which God has specially devolved upon them, they would so lead man and society up to a higher point that the claims they put forth need not be discussed for an hour; because, then, having proved their adaptability to make good use of every lawful right, society, which in the end always adjusts its forces properly and instinctively, will have tacitly fallen into the necessity or the feasibility ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a stupid, unwieldy, and intractable brute, not comparing for a moment with the dog in intelligence or adaptability. The common notion that his name is derived from the use of reins in driving him, thus putting him in the class with the horse, is a mistake; the word comes from a Norse root which refers to his moss-browsing habit. The "rein" with which he is driven is a rope tied around one ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... in saying that it is not even now stronger in mine than any other consideration. But we have both reached that time of life, when it is probable that in any proposition of marriage we should think more of our adaptability to each other than we did before. For myself I know that there is much in my character and disposition to make me unfit to marry a woman of the common stamp. You know my mode of life, and what are my hopes and my chances of success. I run great risk of failing. It may ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... on by points and tags, so that it could be removed at will, sometimes it was merely left open at the sides: in each case it exemplified what are always the true principles of dress, I mean freedom and adaptability ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... by their actual utility; their adaptability to present needs. Traditional benefits can no longer be accepted as a reason for the support of ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... Company, as the Duc De Longueville, in the beautiful Opera Comique, The Basoche, by Messager. The following year he appeared in Wagnerian Music Drama at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, performing the part of Kurwenal, in Tristan and Isolde, without rehearsal. His adaptability to music in English, French, Italian and German, caused him to be at once accepted as a member of that ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... genius. Rarely has a man of letters had so full and varied a life, or been capable of so many-sided a development. His political and scientific activities, though dwarfed in the eyes of our generation by his artistic production, yet showed the adaptability of his talent in the most diverse directions, and helped to give him that balance of temper and breadth of vision in which he has been surpassed by no genius of the ancient or ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... over the auspices was a favourite weapon of the patricians, and one which could naturally be better used at a distance from Rome. The frequency of its use would seem to argue adaptability in the devotional feelings of the nobles at least, which might modify our reliance upon the statement made above as to the respect for the gods then prevalent ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. He indeed will hold in his views, but may not deem it necessary to produce them. I could recall instances in both men of this sternness ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... Southerners, believed that love was the only excuse for marriage; just as most Northerners believe that labor is the only excuse for living. And so the colonel, with no business incentive, acumen, or adaptability, and with the inherited handicap of a luxurious living standard, made a brave onslaught ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... question is the adaptability of the electric arc in comparison with forge fire, oxy-acetylene or other method. The answer is somewhat difficult if made general. There are no doubt some cases where the use of a drop hammer and forge fire or the use of the oxy-acetylene torch will make, all things being considered, ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly

... the latter, there is an automatic weighing machine, by which the material may be weighed as it is delivered, before it goes to the bottom of the elevator, to be again transferred by its means to the barge or granary. Simplicity, efficiency, and adaptability to any position in which elevators of this class are desirable, are the claims the patentees, Messrs. Behrns & Unruth, Lubeck, make for the ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... example, those who have sported in aerial antics in the heights of cloudland or have stormed the enemy's trench are still capable of enjoying a sunset or the call of a bird to its mate at dusk. The wonderful adaptability of the inner being is the salvation of art as well ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... upon passing them in the Rambla. Some were dealers, traders established for a long time in the country, bragging of their Catalan connections with that lying facility of adaptability peculiar to their race. Others came from South America and were associated with those in Barcelona by the free-masonry of comradeship and patriotic interest. But they were all Germans, and that was enough to make ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... himself introduced to a few judges' drawing-rooms, ancient, melancholy dwellings with faded pier-glasses, where he used to go to make a fourth at whist with venerable shadows. Jenkins's evening party was therefore a debut for this provincial, of whom his very ignorance and his southern adaptability ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... their daughter Christine all the advantages of his own learning—which, if truthfully told, was not universal; but the girl had a fair common education, and the native adaptability to progress. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... active sympathy of juries, with whom feeling was perhaps as influential as legal justification. This part, however, of Demosthenes' career only concerns us here in so far as it was an admirable training for his later work in the larger sphere of politics, in which the same qualities of adaptability and of power both to argue cogently and to appeal to the emotions effectively were required in an ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... what wonderful strides have been made in every department of bookmaking, more especially in that of illustration. The art of wood-engraving has been carried, one could almost say, to perfection. In its marvellous capability of imitation it has, perhaps, lost individuality, but it has proved its adaptability to the production of the most diverse and beautiful effects. In the hands of artistic workmen,—for an engraver must nowadays be an artist as well as a workman,—a wood cut may imitate a true engraving, an etching, a mezzotint, a charcoal or crayon drawing, or even the wash of water ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... say that few schools have ever been established upon such a basis of conscientiousness and love, and with such adaptability in its conductors as that at Eagleswood; few have ever held before the pupils so high a moral standard, or urged them on to such noble purposes in life. Children entered there spoiled by indulgence, selfish, uncontrolled, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... garments were uncompromising and scanty of outline. Predestination reigns nowhere more strongly than in clothes, and it would have been inconceivable that either Miss Martin's body or her mind should have assimilated the harmonious fluid adaptability of the draperies that framed and surrounded Lady Gore as ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... as an actor refusing to play her part. Perhaps she was too resentfully conscious of its being but a part—of her having no approach save through a part. For the first time she failed in that adaptability which had always made the stories plausible. In the midst of her tale Katie met Ann's eyes, and ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr. Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire—bright and warm on the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... life he had been following, with sunny adaptability, the line of the least resistance. Thrown out of his groove by the jealousy and resentment of the dark time in his married life, Jim had realized himself as fairly cornered by Fate, and had run away from the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... essentials more rigid than any other, the Brahman has not only recognised the need of a certain plasticity in its construction which allows for constant expansion, but he has himself shown unfailing adaptability in all non-essentials to varying circumstances. To the requirements of their new Western masters the Brahmans adapted themselves from the first with admirable suppleness, and when a Western system of education was introduced into India in the first half ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... nutritious value Variation and flavor Composition and digestibility Selection of meats Preservation of meats Jerked beef Pemmican Preparation and cooking of meat Frozen beef Best methods of cooking Boiling Stewing Steaming Roasting Broiling Beef, economy and adaptability in selection of Recipes: Broiled beef Cold meat stew Pan-broiled steak Pan-broiled steak No. 2 Roast beef Smothered beef Vegetables with stewed beef Stewed beef Mutton Cause of Strong flavor of Recipes: Boiled leg of mutton Broiled chops Pot roast lamb Roast ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... becomes an ever more permanent phenomenon for the greater portion of men, for whom the accident of birth will less and less determine the course of their future life. And the abnormal man who is below the minimum of adaptability to social life and bears the marks of organic degeneration, develops either a passive or an aggressive form of ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... writer. Amy Foster was published in The Illustrated London News with a fine drawing of Amy on her day out giving tea to the children at her home in a hat with a big feather. To-morrow appeared first in the Pall Mall Magazine. Of that story I will only say that it struck many people by its adaptability to the stage and that I was induced to dramatize it under the title of "One Day More"; up to the present my only effort in that direction. I may also add that each of the four stories on their appearance in book form was picked out ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... still further solved her economic problems. Away from the Sawdust Pile, however, life meant parting with her baby. She would have to place him in some sort of public institution if she would be free to earn a living for them both, and she was not aware that she possessed any adaptability for any particular labor which would enable her to earn one hundred dollars a month, the minimum sum upon which she could, by the strictest economy, manage to exist and support her child. Too well she realized ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... in raptures over the whole episode, but especially over the puppy. The latter, with the instantaneous adaptability of extreme youth, had snuggled down into a compact ball, and was blinking one hazy dark blue eye upward at his ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... it is washed by the Mediterranean on the S., Atlantic on the W., and Arctic Ocean on the N.; its coast-line is so highly developed that to every 190 sq. m. of surface there is 1 m. of coast; this advantage, combined with the varied adaptability of its land, rivers, and inland seas, and its central position, has made it the centre of civilisation and the theatre of the main events of the world's history. Its greatest length is 3370 m. from ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... with more amusement. "So! One says: 'Fruit flies,' and immediately another thinks: 'Heredity.' It is practically a standard response. Only, in this case, I am investigating the effect of diet changes. I use fruit flies because of their extreme adaptability. If I find that I am on the right track, I ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... with the adaptability of her kind—the adaptability which makes the French innkeeper the best in the world, always served a real "American breakfast" ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... very head and crown of bird creation. Not, of course, because pretty Poll can talk (in a state of nature, parrots only chatter somewhat meaninglessly to one another), but because the group display on the whole, all round, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness, and of adaptability to circumstances than any other birds, including even their cunning and secretive rivals, the ravens, the jackdaws, the crows, and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... streams in the forest? I asked for nothing better, but I had no trout-rod with me. He produced a rod, SUCH a trout-rod! A long bamboo with a piece of string tied to it! To fish for trout with a worm was contrary to every tradition in which I had been reared, but adaptability is a great thing, so with two turns of a spade I got enough worms for the afternoon, and started off. The Foret d'Aiguebelle is not a forest in our acceptation of the term, but an endless series of little bare rocky hills, dotted with pines, and fragrant with tufts of wild lavender, thyme and ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... the natural, primitive relations of animal life—those systems, to which we have given the names of the great leaders of our science who first proposed them, being in truth but translations into human language of the thoughts of the Creator. And if this is indeed so, do we not find in this adaptability of the human intellect to the facts of creation, by which we become instinctively, and, as I have said, unconsciously, the translators of the thoughts of God, the most conclusive proof of our affinity with the Divine mind? And is not this intellectual and spiritual connection with the Almighty worthy ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper

... said of the use of dialogue? What is the nature of the great epic? What is meant by heroic here? Illustrate. What is a metrical romance? How does it differ from the grand epic? What is said of the adaptability of the metrical romance? Illustrate. What is a metrical tale? Name an example or two. What is a mock epic? For what ends may it be used? Mention ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... because there is less skill required in the builder, we admit, but there the advantage ends. The superiority of the curvilinear form is now beginning to be very generally acknowledged, on account of its being more graceful and pleasing to the eye, and because of its superior adaptability to the growth of plants. When to the curved roof is added the further improvement of circular ends, as illustrated in some of the designs furnished in this work, we have secured forms of houses that will admit double the light of the old-fashioned, ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... the British Navy!" said the first official whom I met. He threw his hat in the air and the peasants standing about raised a cheer. It was my first view of the marvellous adaptability of this great people. I noticed that many of them were wearing little buttons with pictures of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... he himself, born in the smoke of a London street, accepted with the ingenious adaptability of the Irish blood within him the very speech he now wondered at ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle equals the wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel and two feet. No vehicle is used more in China, if the carrying pole is excepted, and no wheelbarrow in the world permits so high an efficiency of human ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... incisors, worked by strong jaws, they can soon gnaw through a tree of this size. But they are capable of attacking trees, even more than 100 cc. in circumference and some forty metres in height, with great skill and adaptability; "no better work could be accomplished by a most highly-finished steel cutting tool, wielded by a muscular human arm" (Martin). They operate seated on their hind quarters, and they make their incision in the wood with a feather ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... is to me a never-failing source of interest. Though the various species of trees appear to be growing almost at random, yet each species shows a decided preference for peculiar altitude, soil, temperature, and moisture conditions. It is an interesting demonstration of tree adaptability to follow a stream which comes out of the west, in the middle mountain-zone, and observe how unlike the trees are which thrive on opposite sides. On the southerly slopes that come down to the water is an open ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... with such incipient social and political institutions as has the Bontoc Igorot should have developed a "money" is remarkable. The North American Indian with his strong tendency and adaptability to political organization had no such money. Nothing of the kind has been presented as belonging to the Australian of ultrasocial development, and I am not aware that anything equal has been produced ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... Harrison's Landing during the severe battles which marked McClellan's movement from the Chickahominy to the James River. Amidst the terrible scenes of those eventful days, the quiet energy, the wonderful comforting and soothing power, and the perfect adaptability of Miss Gilson to her ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... has for more than twenty years been before the building public. Its success, adaptability, and practicability, have been fully demonstrated. Its simple, effective and economical manner of construction, has very materially aided the rapid settlement of the West, and placed the art of building, to a great extent, within the control ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... only at night that he could play there with any fair chance of success; but he not unfrequently had other business of a similar nature on hand to occupy his mornings and afternoons; and when he was engaged or absent, Madelon, with the happy adaptability of a solitary child, had no difficulty in amusing herself alone with her toys, and picture-books, and dolls. At other times, when her father was at leisure, there would be walks with him, long afternoons spent in the gay Kursaal gardens, listening to the bands of music; and on idle days, which ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... courteously as you would your special friends at an afternoon of pink tea and pink thoughts. Visiting the sick, trading fur, cultivating her little garden, bringing wolf pups and bear cubs up by hand, thus this plucky woman passes her days. It takes the adaptability and dour determination of a Scot to fit into this niche. Your Irishwoman would last in McMurray ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... notice the social elevation of the more aspiring male and female adventurers. The rising tide of wealth grows. Judicious use of early gained riches, trips to Europe, furtive lessons, the necessities of the changed station, and an unlimited cheek and astounding adaptability change the lucky men and women whom fortune's dower has ennobled. They are ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... were sure that great difficulties in production would meet our attempts at retaliation. In general this proved true, but in this case and increasingly throughout the war, they reckoned without Allied adaptability. The French development of ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... all kinds of poetry alike there was one point on which they were rigidly exacting; the adaptability of the subject to the kind of poetry selected, and the careful construction ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... the text. I must show you another element which must exist in the manner of all right hearing. That element is discrimination. Without this, how is the hearer to know whether the truth or its opposite is being preached? The comparison may lack adaptability in some of its points, but I have heard it said that some hearers are like young birds in their nest, ready to swallow down anything put into their mouths. Such as hear in this way lack discrimination; that is, they ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... representative-elect from the Fort Canibas district, became still more indispensable in General Waymouth's daily life. Duties at a desk had worn upon him. This everlasting mingling with men was more to his taste. He had natural adaptability. He was a good judge of human nature. He had serene good nature. Physique and manner made him master of many situations at the old brick house that otherwise would have sadly tried the General's strength and temper. Therefore, his chief placed greater dependence upon his lieutenant ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... higher vertebrates there are many known factors which have influence, some in one set of cases, some in another set of cases, in the development and preservation of species. Courage, intelligence, adaptability, prowess, bodily vigor, speed, alertness, ability to hide, ability to build structures which will protect the young while they are helpless, fecundity—all, and many more like them, have their several places; and behind all these visible causes there are at work other and often ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... the most marvelous facts connected with the true religion, and itself a proof of its divinity, is its complete adaptability to every condition of life and to every degree of intelligence. Its essentials are as readily grasped by the clodhopper as by the profoundest scholar whose years are spent in delving into the mysteries ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... these will their work be of the most distinct value by reason of the natural adaptability, sensitive or artistic temperaments, and individual ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... their cow punchers started work the next day. Dick and Nort remembered, in a dim way, how, as Boy Scouts, they had helped erect towers, hastily constructed of saplings. Their recalled knowledge, together with the natural adaptability and skill of the cowboys, finally succeeded in there being evolved, and erected, on the aide of the valley rather a pretentious tower. "It must look like an oil well derrick from a distance," observed Nort, when ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... character with the skill of a man who, like the illustrious Charles Fox, has, though in private representations, practised the stage-play in which Demosthenes said the triple art of oratory consisted; who has seen a great deal of the world, and has that adaptability of intellect which knowledge of the world lends to one who is so thoroughly in earnest as to his end that he agrees to be sportive ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... those qualifications which constitute a great traveller. Physically as well as mentally she seems to have proved herself the equal of men. Endurance, courage, promptitude, decision, the capacity for quiet and accurate observation, the ready adaptability to circumstances—she possessed all these high virtues. Her "Ride in the Rocky Mountains" shows what may be accomplished by a brave, strong woman under very difficult conditions. In one respect, perhaps, her sex was an advantage; it appears to have ensured her ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... The adaptability, invention and resource of the men of the Discovery when they set to work after the failures of the autumn to prepare for the successes of the two following summers showed that they could rise to their difficulties. Scott admitted that "food, clothing, everything was wrong, the whole system ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... however, he deduces his story logically and precisely, appealing never to our passions and almost constantly to our common sense. His people are as full of common-sense as Defoe's. They may have more pluck than the average man or woman, and they usually have more adaptability; but they apply to extraordinary circumstances the good unsentimental reasoning of ordinary life, and usually with the happiest results. The shipwreck of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine was extraordinary enough, but their subsequent conduct was rational almost to precision: and in story-telling ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... roles. It was designed and partly completed during Wagner's stay in Riga as orchestra leader. In his Autobiography the composer says that he first read the story at Dresden in 1837, and was greatly impressed with its adaptability for opera. He began it in the fall of the same year at Riga, and says: "I had composed two numbers of it, when I found, to my annoyance, that I was again fairly on the way to the composition of music a la Adam. I put the work aside in disgust." ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... concern for her health in time to protect herself from the curiosity of her loving-kindness. Her youth and readiness and adaptability, and that power of play-acting which we all have within us and of which she had her share, stood to her. With but little effort, based on a seeming acquiescence in her aunt's views, she succeeded in convincing the old lady that her incipient feverish cold had already reached ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... other kinds of morality, is necessarily constituted by inherited traditions modified by new adaptations to the changing social environment. If the influence of tradition becomes unduly pronounced the moral life tends to decay and lose its vital adaptability. If adaptability becomes too facile the moral life tends to become unstable and to lose authority. It is only by a reasonable synthesis of structure and function—of what is called the traditional with what is called the ideal—that the moral life can retain its authority ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... one of the most fertile causes of infection and illness in babies because of the peculiar adaptability to collecting germs which ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... fine-looking man. As he advanced to greet her, it was evident that his military title was not one of the mere fanciful sobriquets of the locality. In his erect figure and the disciplined composure of limb and attitude there were still traces of the refined academic rigors of West Point. The pliant adaptability of Western civilization, which enabled him, three years before, to leave the army and transfer his executive ability to the more profitable profession of the law, had loosed sash and shoulder-strap, but had not entirely ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... to submission, submit she must; and when she perceived a conflict of authorities, she prepared to accept the new order of things under which her children's future was to be formed; wherein she showed her native adaptability, the readiness to fall into line, which is one of the most charming traits ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin



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