Supple vs Submissive - What's the difference?
supple | submissive |
pliant, flexible, easy to bend
lithe and agile when moving and bending
compliant; yielding to the will of others
* John Locke
To make or become supple.
* Dryden
* Spenser
To make compliant, submissive, or obedient.
* John Locke
* Barrow
Meekly obedient or passive.
* 1756 , Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke , G. Bell & sons, page 314:
* 1913 , Edward Lee Thorndike, Educational Psychology , Teachers college, Columbia university, page 92:
* 2007 , Brian Watermeyer, Disability and Social Change: A South African Agenda , HSRC Press, page 269:
As adjectives the difference between supple and submissive
is that supple is pliant, flexible, easy to bend while submissive is meekly obedient or passive.As a verb supple
is to make or become supple.As a noun submissive is
one who submits.supple
English
Adjective
(er)- supple''' joints; '''supple fingers
- a supple horse
- If punishment makes not the will supple , it hardens the offender.
Verb
- The stones suppled into softness as they fell.
- The flesh therewith she suppled and did steep.
- a mother persisting till she had bent her daughter's mind and suppled her will
- They should supple our stiff willfulness.
submissive
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- The powerful managers for government were not sufficiently submissive to the pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimes from a confidence in their own strength natural and acquired; sometimes from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the country, which gave them a consideration independent of the court.
- If the human being who answers these tendencies assumes a submissive behavior, in essence a lowering of head and shoulders, wavering glance, absence of all preparations for attack, general weakening of muscle tonus, and hesitancy in movement, the movements of attempt at mastery become modified into attempts at the more obvious swagger, strut and glare of triumph.
- Once oppression has been internalised, little force is needed to keep us submissive .