1. Unyielding, obstinate, stubborn.
c. 1400. Wycliffite Bible, Heb. x. 23. We … holde the confessioun of oure hope vnbowynge [v.r. vnpliable; L. indeclinabilem].
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 687. Their stiffenesse and unpliable disposition, the roughnesse also of their skinne, argueth their dry nature.
1627. I. Bargrave, Serm., 4. Wee are all as oxen unpliable to the yoake.
1652. Urquhart, Jewel, 250. Such … sinners as should prove unpliable to the stamp of his wholesome admonitions.
1774. Reid, Aristotle’s Logic, IV. § 3. It is somewhat unpliable to rules.
1885. S. Cox, Expositions, I. 101. He saw a new heaven and a new earth… free from all that renders it hostile or unpliable to the spirit of man.
2. Unbending, inelastic, stiff. Also fig.
1622. F. Markham, Bk. War, I. x. 38. Buckram … is too stiffe and unplyable.
1747. Cooke, in Hanway, Trav., IV. lvi. (1762), I. 260. The paper was very hard and unpliable.
1759. Phil. Trans., LI. 290. [Wires] so unpliable and brittle, as to be rendered quite useless.
1773. Johnson, 8 Oct., in Boswell, Tour Hebrides. She had no notion of a joke,… had a mighty unpliable understanding.
1806. Forsyth, Beauties Scotl., IV. 31. The spruce … has unpliable branches.
1825. Scott, Betrothed, iii. A broad countenance, with heavy and unpliable features.
Hence Unpliableness.
1635. Brathwait, Arcad. Pr., 99. I feel very usually such a stiffnesse, or unpliablenesse in my selfe.
c. 1720. Gibson, Diet Horses, i. (1731), 11. From an Unpliableness or Straitness of the Ligaments.
1754. Hume, Hist. England, I. 158. That the commons,… by their unpliableness and independance, were insensibly changing.
1787. Best, Angling (ed. 2), 9. The line by reason of their unpliableness must be much endangered.
