Word of the Day

: February 17, 2018

biddable

adjective BID-uh-bul

What It Means

1 : easily led, taught, or controlled : docile

2 : capable of being bid

biddable in Context

"Unfailingly sweet and biddable (he never put his teeth on another creature—not even when he was bitten on the snout by a friend's ten-week-old puppy), we almost doubted his full canine credentials. No pack instincts? No resource guarding? No." — Mona Charen, The National Review, 23 Nov. 2016

"Because of the lack of documentation, the audit couldn't directly determine whether the project met a goal of awarding 60 percent of the biddable work to local firms, and 20 percent to small businesses." — Ben van der Meer, The Sacramento Business Journal, 5 Dec. 2017

Did You Know?

A biddable individual is someone you can issue an order to—that is, someone who will do your bidding. The word dates to the late 18th century, and currently our earliest evidence for it is a quote in the Scottish National Dictionary. There are a number of words in English that do what biddable does. Tractable, amenable, and docile are three of them. Biddable is often applied to children and indicates a ready, constant inclination to follow orders, requests, and suggestions. Tractable suggests characteristics that make for easy guiding, leading, ordering, or managing; its antonym intractable (as in "intractable problems") is more common. Amenable indicates a disposition to be agreeable or complaisant as well as a lack of assertive independence. Docile can stress a disposition to submit, either due to guidance and control or to imposition and oppression.