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Adaptability   /ədˌæptəbˈɪləti/   Listen
Adaptability

noun
1.
The ability to change (or be changed) to fit changed circumstances.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Adaptability" Quotes from Famous Books



... In neither case would he 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

... means that the telegraph is increasingly being utilized as a means of correspondence of every conceivable sort. It means also that with the growing appreciation of its adaptability to the every-day needs of social and business communication a very much larger public demand upon it must be anticipated, and it is to meet this demand with prompt and satisfactory service that the telegraph company has been ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers

... ability to stretch it only demonstrated still further his 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 meant their ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... horned cattle flourishing at every elevation, from the sea-level to the mountain-pastures ten thousand feet above it. Horses and sheep show less adaptability to this variety of climates. The horses and mules come mostly from the States of the North, at a level of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet; that remarkable country of which Humboldt's observation gives us the best idea, when he says that, although there are no made roads, wheel-carriages ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... This was more logical than the marriage with his niece for her father's millions. Margalida was a fine woman. He understood these things; when Jaime should take her away from the island, and accustom her to different ways and to different dress, with the adaptability of woman, it would soon be impossible to recognize the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Williams explains the existence of this difference by describing the receptivity and all-comprehensiveness of Hinduism. "It has something to offer which is suited to all minds, its very strength lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human characters and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side, suited to the metaphysical philosopher; its practical and concrete side, suited to the man of affairs and the man of the world; its aesthetic and ceremonial side, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... traditions, religions "The marriage of East and West" THE OLD RELIGION (1) Its strength: in its ancient tradition in its splendour of art, architecture and ceremony in its oracles, healings and theophanies in its adaptability in absorbing all cults and creeds (2) Its weakness: No deep sense of truth No association with morality Polytheism The fear of the grave (3) Its defence: Plutarch—the Stoics—Neo-Platonism—the Eclectics THE VICTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH (1) Its characteristics ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... authority eccentric substitutes, smaller men who issue arbitrary commands and require stories entirely different in style and character from what is regularly required. But the cub's first lesson must be in adaptability, willingness to obey orders and to accept news policies determined by those in authority. He must therefore follow to the letter the wishes of the city editor (or his assistants) and must always be loyal to him ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... and realizing the innate charm of the work and its adaptability to modern demands, a few enthusiasts have made of late years an effort to preserve and extend it, both in order that a distinctive and vitally American art-form may not disappear, and as a means of self-support for Indian women. Depots or stores have been established at various ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... and me! What an idea! Why, he's helping us"—the inspiration to say this came from a blind belief in Gaston's quick adaptability—"he's helping me and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... southern Canada, one is forced to place hardiness first. Rapid growth, high yield and excellent quality of nuts are of little value if hardiness is lacking. Hardiness, of course, is a relative term and may be applied to disease and insect resistance, adaptability to diverse soils and capacity to withstand extremes of winter and summer temperatures. In the present paper emphasis will be placed on resistance to winter cold and to unusual weather conditions, such as occurred during the autumn of 1933 and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... Oh, the adaptability of American youth! "Made it in seven hours continuous flight," Johnny informed him carelessly. "Nothing to it. Yes, the sixth floor will be all right. Didn't bring any baggage—didn't want to load the ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... His example has indubitably served to enrich the expressional material at the disposal of the modern music-maker—there cannot conceivably, in reason, be two opinions as to that: he has acted upon a principle which is, beyond question, liberating and stimulating. And the adaptability to his own peculiar temperament of the wavering and fluid order of discourse which is permitted by the flexibility and variety of the ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... or two Belle was glad to rest in the evenings from the intolerable weariness caused by standing all day, but the adaptability of the human frame is wonderful, and many at last become accustomed, and, in some sense, inured to that which was torture at first. Belle was naturally strong and vigorous, and her compact, healthful organism endured the cruel ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... sympathy, and equity, but my pride forbade me to ask for them, or to employ any address or calculation to obtain them.... I do not think I have been wrong altogether, for all through I have been in harmony with my best self, but my want of adaptability has worn me out, to no purpose. Now, indeed, I am at peace within, but my career is over, my strength is running out, and my life is near ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... social environment in which he is born, so that emigration 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 abnormality and becomes ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... ambled our way agreeably out of Bath, Paddy and I employed ourselves in worthy speech. He was not yet a notable horseman, but his Irish adaptability was so great that he was already able to think he would not fall off so long as the ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... sympathy, and Mira took courage. It is not the contemplation of their nobler qualities, but their weaknesses, that puts us on easy terms with our fellow-men. Breakfast promised to last a long time. Gaffney, with the adaptability of the trooper of years of service on the frontier, had been worming something of their visitors' story out of them. The average Indian never wants to tell his name, but gets a friend to give it for him. It proved, however, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... minutes of the general Assembly, in the quaint old records of the Land and Registers' offices, in the patents granted by the colonial Government, and in sundry other official records. In public affairs they seem to have had the same adaptability for politics which, among other things, has in later days brought their countrymen into prominence. Florence O'Sullivan from Kerry was surveyor-general of South Carolina in 1671. James Moore, a native of Ireland and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... stimulating the intellectual life and molding the political future of the colony. He so far forsook the strait "Manchester School" of his upbringing as to support Macdonald's campaign for protection in 1878. But that was the limit of his adaptability. To the end he remained out of touch with Canadian feeling. His campaign for annexation, or for the reunion of the English-speaking peoples on this continent, as he preferred to call it, was able and persistent but moved only a narrow circle of readers. It was in vain that he offered ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... 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 ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... a man of considerable good nature and ready adaptability to the society or circumstances by which he might be surrounded. "Chaff" was a very cheap order of wit, and the serenity of his disposition enabled him to shake off its effect as readily as water is scattered from ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... comforting about it she could not have said, but in some way it seemed to be an emblem of her hopes. She wedged herself tightly between the roots, laid her head down upon the uppermost of them, and, such is the adaptability of youth and health, slept on her dangerous perch like a ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... need of a species that had at least these two qualities: some quenchless desire, to urge them on and on; and also adaptability of a thousand kinds ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... fact, when a man is in love, and a girl does not yet know her own mind; when she is weighing out their adaptability, and balancing his love for football against her passion for Browning; during the delicate, tentative period, when the most affectionate solicitude from friends is an irritation, there ought to be a law banishing the interested couple to an island peopled ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... America, the most democratic of countries, comes here, not as to a strange land, but as to a home? The ability of the Russian Jew to adjust himself to America's essentially democratic conditions is not to be explained by Jewish adaptability. The explanation lies mainly in the fact that the twentieth century ideals of America have been the ideals of the Jew for more than twenty centuries. We have inherited these ideals of democracy and of social justice as we have the qualities of mind, body and character ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... was 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

... 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 bend other wills ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of these creatures, otherwise so unlike. Both are vertebrate animals, though the backbone of a fish is in some respects unlike that of a bird, still the plan is the same, and it has been truly said that "among the many wonders of nature there is nothing more wonderful than this—the adaptability of the one Vertebrate type to the infinite variety of life to which it serves an as organ and a home." But when you said that the herring had neither legs nor wings, you forgot to notice the fins, by means of which it moves from place to place ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... with oaths of bitter rage, that "them hell-and-twenty Flying A cowpunchers had cut the court-house up into parts." It was true. The cowboys were in need of chaps, and with an admirable mixture of adventurousness, frugality, and ready adaptability to circumstances, had made substitutes therefore in the shape of canvas overalls, cut from the roof and walls of the shaky temple ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... field of mechanics electricity is decidedly preferable to any other agent. Heat may be transformed into motive power by a suitable engine, but there its adaptability is at an end. An electric current drives not only a motor, but every machine and tool attached to the motor, the whole executing tasks of a delicacy and complication new to industrial art. On an electric railroad an identical current propels the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... 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 most of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... than any other woman. He had talked freely to her. He had concealed naught from her. He had spoken to her of his discouragements and his weaknesses. He had had no shame before her. By her acquiescences, her skill, her warmth, her adaptability, her intense womanliness, she had created between them a bond stronger than anything that could keep them apart. The bond existed. It could not during the whole future be broken save by a disloyalty. A disloyalty, she divined, would irrevocably ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... to facts relative to natural history: and this is the more lamentable, and perhaps the more surprising, when we consider its unlimited adaptability to all capacities, ages, sexes, and ranks; and, moreover, the absolute necessity of many parts of it to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various

... old suggestion which the Emperor William I. once made, but it has never yet been considered. It is not with cavalry usually a question of protracted artillery engagements, but of utilizing momentary opportunities; the greatest mobility is required together with the most many-sided efficiency and adaptability. There can obviously, therefore, be no question of a systematic combination with the artillery. Such a thing can only be of value in the case of cavalry when it is important to make a ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... Hellenic spirit is light. Hebraism means moral fervour; Hellenism means intellectual sensibility. Hebraism suggests strength of conviction, tenacity of resolve, prophetic vehemence; Hellenism suggests flexibility of thought, adaptability to circumstances, artistic serenity. Hebraism suggests the austere and spiritual life, Hellenism the social and sensuous life. Yet none of these brief antitheses can be wholly or exclusively true. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... 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 made immediately ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... 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 ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

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

... taking place in certain machine industries favour the increasing adaptability of labour. Many machine processes are either common to many industries, or are so narrowly distinguished that a fairly intelligent workman accustomed to one can soon learn another. If it is true that "the general ability, which is easily transferable from one trade to another, is every ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... arrived at her fate. Too late she became aware how fatal to her interests had been the intrigues of which she had been the passive instrument; and I suspect that she was debarred from seeking forgiveness and help partly by false shame, and partly by the terrible adaptability of weak natures to the condition of the society in which they find themselves. I have said that there is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley, and I have indicated the most probable motives of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... 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 ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... answer to your letter of the 19th ultimo, I am directed by the Secretary of State for War to say that a Commission, the composition of which is not finally determined, will shortly be visiting the Islands, with a view to reporting on the adaptability of their existing military works for Coast Defence. Notice of the probable date of this visit shall be sent to you, and the Commissioners will doubtless be glad to avail themselves of any information you may be good enough to put at their disposal. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... have no misgivings. There is adaptability of character in Fanny. But my younger daughter, Mrs General, rather worries and vexes my thoughts. I must inform you that she has ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... with the block vote as used in the London municipal elections. Yet, in spite of the marked superiority of the Japanese system, it falls short of a true system of representation; it lacks the elasticity and adaptability which should characterize such a system. Like the limited vote and the cumulative vote, the Japanese system of the single vote demands exact calculations on the part of party organizations, which otherwise may fail to secure for their party ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... cabins had been torn away to make more room for the troops who would sleep in rows on her decks, as thick as buffaloes in a herd. The soldiers, like all the others whom he saw, were mostly boys. The average could not be over twenty, and some were not over sixteen. But they had the adaptability of youth. They had scattered themselves about in easy positions. One was playing an accordion, and another a fiddle. The officers did ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... be thoughtfully noted that all the selections in this and the three succeeding chapters have been chosen for their easy adaptability to use in the first natural period of art— expression, the Colossal period. They are selections with an easily distinguishable theme. Throughout these chapters the mind of the student should be engaged with the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... thousand voices, an organ, and an orchestra of two 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 his most ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... ground comprehended in 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 ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... 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

... A spirit of concession and adaptability, that will enable her to conform to the general rules and regulations of the schools, and to harmonize her plans and efforts with those of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Lagunitas, to 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 ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... with the idea of making her work serve her as a training school for better work in the future may make a success of her life after all. Such a girl will have good observing powers and ability to follow directions and gauge the success of results. She will have adaptability, patience, and a very definite ambition. For domestic service may be a ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... See II, p.51. Many years later Herder does not seem to view this period of imitation with such regret as the attitude of these earlier criticisms would forecast. In the "Ideen zur Geschichte und Kritik der Poesie und bildenden Knste," 1794-96, he states with a burst of enthusiasm over the adaptability of the German language that he regards imitation as no just reproach, for thereby has Germany become ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... along in the teens consider it quite right to tell one story to a teacher or to another child who is disliked, and a different story to one that is liked. This attitude probably arises not so much from a desire to deceive as an outcome of natural cunning and adaptability. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... pursuits, then, most noble lords of creation, we yield to you the palm—you are our masters in this respect. But if, on the other hand, it can be shown that physical strength is not a requisite for great achievements in these occupations; if the powers of endurance, elasticity, adaptability, nervous energy, and patience are quite as needful as mere animal strength; then we women are quite as capable, and indeed more capable than men, for achieving political greatness. In the 'good old days,' when the law of might ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... and piled it so neatly that even the grim handmaiden was pleased. After that, she sent him to the garden to pick the early beans. In the evening he milked three cows and did all the chores, falling into the ways of the place with a deft adaptability that went far ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... fled as soon as his ready adaptability had made him a useful hand to his new master, and took to a roving life again. What he was now doing in Marseilles no one could ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all right, her vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched. If not, the world by her failure to make good would be impoverished, and her vagary proved wrong. The orthodox and academies—he insisted—were always forgetting the adaptability of living organisms; how every action which was out of the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions together with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer. "Of course Nollie was crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she at once began to think differently about ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... roof of one of his humble subjects. At the supper table that night he won all hearts by the grace of his manners, the sweetness of his smiles, his ready courtesy to all, and the brilliant sallies that escaped his lips which set the whole table sometimes in a roar. He possessed that ready adaptability to circumstances which is often an attribute of the highest birth. The motherly heart of Mistress Devenish went out to him at once, and she would fain have known something of his history, and how it came that so fair and ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... might well seem that there could be no variation to the sum. And the resulting prophecy would necessarily be an evil, or at least a pessimistic one. He was so helpless, so lacking in all the practicalities of human life. He seemed to have one little focus that was quite incapable of expansion, of adaptability. That focus was almost entirely filled by his Jessie's image, with just a small place in it reserved for his twins. Take the woman out of it, and, to all intents and purposes, he looked out upon a ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... nectarines, the market is practically unlimited, and as our population increases yearly 1,500,000 people, it will be seen that our markets must extend as well, even after we have driven all foreign Fruits out of our home markets. As regards the adaptability of the land of British Colony for various Fruits, I can say that they are especially adapted to the prune (French plums) and peaches for drying and canning, olives for olive oil and pickling; also for oranges. You can see how the orange thrives in the city of Merced ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett

... replied the lawyer seriously; "it's chiefly a matter of practice added to gift—natural gift," but here Barkman's conceit died out as he caught an uneasy, impatient movement of Miss Conklin, and he went on quietly with the knowledge of life and the adaptability gained by long experience: "But anyway, I'm glad you agree with me, for Miss Conklin may take ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... electric power operating, salesmanship, and other interesting activities can well be offered in Vocational Education. As the student in her chosen field plans, considers expenses, and contrives to utilize her material she gains skill, adaptability, judgment, and the true basis of criticism. The world's work interests her as its meaning becomes clear through her own experiences, and she begins to see ways to better her condition and to be a factor in ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... schools for the reading and writing of Spanish among the boys. They taught them to serve in the church, to sing the plain-song, and to the accompaniment of the organ; to play the flute, to dance, and to sing; and to play the harp, guitar, and other instruments. In this they show very great adaptability, especially about Manila; where there are many fine choirs of chanters and musicians composed of natives, who are skilful and have good voices. There are many dancers, and musicians on the other instruments which solemnize and ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

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

... the people, were those who accepted the thing at its face value, read its own papers, went about its business, and spared time to laugh at the absurdities or growl at the inconveniences of the phenomena. With true American adaptability, it speedily accustomed itself to both the expectation of, and the coping with, unusual conditions. It went forth about its daily affairs; it started for home a little early in order to get there in season; it eschewed subways and theaters; ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... passions. In addition, music makes possible pantomimic scenes which could not be done otherwise, and the music itself flows more easily under such conditions. But that does not mean that such conditions are indispensable for music. Music in its flexibility and adaptability offers inexhaustible resources. Give Mozart a fairy tale like the Magic Flute or a lively comedy such as Le Nozze di Figaro and he creates without effort ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... toward civilization within the past five years is very remarkable and shows, as well as anything could show, the adaptability of the Indian. At the same time, I believe that if it had not been for that fateful experience known as "the starvation winter," the progress made by the Blackfeet would have been very much less than it has been. The Indian requires ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell

... 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 advantages of their ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... for a new consular service have in recent years been submitted to the 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... confidence, prevent the wholesale stoppage of mills, and at the same time establish a cotton reserve to counteract the fluctuations of crops in the future.[1] These matters need but to be stated as examples of the remarkable adaptability of the State and the possibility of drastic action under the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... brought up in a backwater of life. Now she was being drawn into that world of the new woman—where are women policemen, and women chauffeurs, and militant suffragists, and women in overalls and breeches, and many other strange types. The war has shown us—suddenly and marvellously—the adaptability of women. Would little Nelly, too, prove as plastic as the rest, and in the excitement of meeting new demands, and reaching out to new powers, forget the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a man," said young Quincy, "who is honest, conscientious, and a perfect tiger for work, but he knows nothing about the grocery business. He has adaptability, that valuable quality, but, while learning, he might make some ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... of the raspberry is a well-drained but not a very dry, light soil. Yet such is its adaptability that certain varieties can be grown on any land which will produce a burdock or a mullien-stalk. In fact, this question of variety chiefly determines our chances of success and the nature of our treatment of the fruit. The reader, at the start, should be enabled to distinguish ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... enumerated are the chief faults we have to find with the foreign Jew. Just because he is willing and able to work so hard for so little pay, willing to undertake any kind of work out of which he can make a living, because he can surpass in skill, industry, and adaptability the native Londoner, the foreign Jew is such a terrible competitor. He is the nearest approach to the ideal "economic" man, the "fittest" person to survive in trade competition. Admirable in domestic ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... OF SAUCES AND GRAVIES are of the highest consequence, and in nothing does the talent and taste of the cook more display itself. Their special adaptability to the various viands they are to accompany cannot be too much studied, in order that they may harmonize and blend with them as perfectly, so to speak, as does a pianoforte accompaniment with the voice ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... in the least about her financial affairs. She felt sure that sooner or later she would realize on the sale of oil lands, and in the meantime the economy she and Molly were compelled to practice was rather exciting and interesting than annoying. Mrs. Brown had the happy faculty of adaptability, and living on Rue Brea she found there were many American students who were compelled to exercise the ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... of the ceremonies. The women looked harmless enough, but had they not been told that they must not come there? They were causing no riot, in fact they were clearly adding much beauty. People seemed to take them as part of the elaborate ceremony but officials seldom have sense of humor enough or adaptability enough to change quickly, especially when ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... chuckle not entirely pleasant Adaptability was his greatest weapon in life Being tired you can sleep, and in sleep you can forget Cling to beliefs long after conviction has been shattered Egotism with which all are diseased Egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities Follow me; if I retreat, kill ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Tichatscheck, Mme. Schroeder-Devrient, and Mlle. Wiest in the principal 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 Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... invariably supported the show, while the lower classes came as a matter of course. Mr Wopples, however, was equally as clever in providing a bill of fare as in inducing the public to come to the theatre, and the adaptability of the family was really wonderful. One night they would play farcical comedy; then Hamlet, reduced to four acts by Mr Wopples, would follow on the second night; the next night burlesque would reign supreme; and when the curtain arose on the fourth night ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... more adapted to northern climates, others to the soils of western or eastern regions and so on. These qualities must have decided the general lines of the distribution, and the species must have been segregated according to their respective climatic qualities, and their adaptability to soil and weather. A struggle for life and a natural selection must have accompanied and guided the distribution, but there is no reason to assume that the various forms were changed by this process, and that we see them now endowed with other qualities ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... upon 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 ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper

... Crosland would have admitted him to their intimacy for the sake of Dorothy; but simple souls themselves, they recognised in him a kindred simplicity, and admitted him to their friendship. He possessed, to a great degree, the American adaptability; and it is not surprising that he fell into their way of taking life easily. It was only for the time being. The millionaire is a good deal of the Sindbad, and he must bear the burden and go the way of ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... related to material, color, and becomingness; style, durability; adaptability to fine or rough wear, to repair and remaking; suitability to season, health, occupation, comfort; home-made VERSUS ready-made; conditions of manufacture, use of child labor, the sweat shop, ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... variety of employments to which the American pioneers were obliged to betake themselves has done something, no doubt, to produce a national versatility, a quick assimilation of new methods and notions, a ready adaptability to novel emergencies. An invaluable pioneer trait is curiosity; the settler in a new country, like Moses in the wilderness of Arabia, must "turn aside to see"; he must look into things, learn to read signs,—or else the Indians or frost or freshet ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... owing to their different mental temperaments, will view things in a different light. Where one, an artist born, is carried away with the beautiful scenery, another, with a more practical turn of mind, perceives only its adaptability for investments. Education and habits of life are also very potent factors in determining our views on various questions. Scholars of wide and extended learning differ very greatly in their views of questions deeply affecting human interests. We know how true that is of abstruse ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... in the same department was approved by a majority of the firms, and its adaptability to the selling department was especially emphasized. But some of the best houses will permit no such competition. The diversity in opinion was very pronounced ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... always be found in the account between earth and heaven some "desperate debt," mayhap an "accommodation bill," which justifies the ways of God to man. It may even be said that the fact of our being generally able to find that item is a proof of the wonderful adaptability of Christianity to the fortunes and hopes of our race. That ministers avoid the special topics of peculiar destinies, may easily be accounted for otherwise than by supposing that they cannot explain them so as to vindicate ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... a little breath. The remarkable adaptability of her race came to her rescue; her point of ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... his 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 of opinion. Forster ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... arms to me as a returning prodigal, and my revulsion of feeling was all the more spontaneous from the fact, that, if some of my former acquaintances were as frivolous as ever, they had learned to conceal their emptiness by an adaptability which made them agreeable companions. There was a keen satisfaction, too, in the consciousness which became mine, as I went from house to house during the following weeks, that I excelled the most of them in the power to make myself agreeable. The reading and study of ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... years the present sources of water supply will be inadequate. The whole subject of water supply for northern New Jersey demands immediate consideration, and it would not be wise to take up the matter of prevention of flood damage in the Passaic without basing the value of every project upon its adaptability for use in future ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton

... The adaptability of the Barnes hickory on all stocks is notable, for it is the only one of the 10 fine hickories tested in the 1919 contest, of which this is true. If these grafts continue to flourish, and especially if future experiments check the results this year, the Barnes will have a peculiar value for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... vegetarian diet, such foods had better be taken that are rather rich in proteid, and that approximate somewhat in their flavour and manner of cooking to that used previously. A further change to a simpler diet can afterwards gradually be made, according to conviction, tastes and bodily adaptability. It must not be expected that a change, even an ultimately very advantageous one, will always meet with an immediate and proper response from digestive and assimilative organs which have been accustomed for many ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... 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

... head waiter a few yards off, and a myrmidon handing them their dishes with a beatific smile, the conversation drifted naturally into generalities. When they resumed their more intimate talk, Tallente felt himself inspired by an ever-increasing admiration for his companion and her adaptability. During this brief interval he had seen many admiring and some wondering glances directed towards Jane and he realised that she was somehow a person entirely apart from any of the others, more beautiful, more distinguished, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... regard the City of St. Anthony as equalling Minneapolis as a place of residence in point of health. Even in the latter city it is important that a home be had as remote from the neighborhood of the Falls as is convenient. Its adaptability to the needs of the invalid consists more in the walks and drives, the ample boarding-house and hotel accommodations, good markets, and cheerful, pleasant society, than in the particular location of the town itself or in the ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... 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

... climatic conditions, fifty reported that peaches are reliably hardy in their sections, while fifty said they are not. This, according to the late Thomas P. Littlepage, is a fairly reliable index to the climatic adaptability of present varieties of northern grown pecans. Ninety-two planters reported that their seasons are long enough to mature Concord grapes. Only four said "no." For Catawba grapes? "Yes," said forty-two; "No," fourteen. For field corn? "Yes," ninety-three; "No," four. This question ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... on qualities it acquired during the period of Renaissance autocracy and revived paganism; qualities that do not affect its essential integrity or authority but do misrepresent it before men, and work as a handicap in its adaptability and in its work of winning souls to Christianity and re-establishing the unity of Christendom. Fortunately this very immobility has saved it from a surrender to the new forces that were developed in secular society during ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... 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 power as the Chinese, as must ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... eyesight. The pupils have confidence in a blind teacher, because they know that every step in their difficult path is familiar to her feet. The qualifications for a home teacher are, briefly, these: personality, adaptability, tact, a sense of humor, a broad, comprehending sympathy, a strongly hoping heart, unlimited patience, and a determination to do what is best for her pupils, no matter what the opposition, or how hard the task may be. "He who ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... are doing this, the tree peddler will be powerless for mischief—will in fact become a great public benefactor. But so long as nursery-men will continue to grow and sell worthless varieties, and so long as the people will remain in ignorance regarding adaptability, so long will the dishonest peddler remain an unmitigated nuisance and fraud. In brief these three things are wanted: Intelligent and honest nurserymen; orchard planters who either know what varieties are best ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... fatal. But if this great difference has been brought about in the red man, might not the same have happened to the white man? Plainly it might, time being given; for one cannot doubt that the inherent adaptability is the same in both, or (if not) that the white man possesses it in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 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 ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... is a popular utensil for cooking and serving. It is suitable for foods that need to be cooked at a low temperature for a long period of time; hence its adaptability to tough cuts of meat. Because the casserole is tightly covered, foods may be cooked in it with little loss by evaporation. The flavor is retained also, if the cooking is carefully done. The use of the casserole in serving is a distinct ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... 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 ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... of lettering: 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; ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton

... mathematical truth of human vicissitudes. On the whole, no other vehicle of emotion and no other means to ecstasy has served man so well. In art any flood of spiritual exaltation finds a channel ready to nurse and lead it: and when art fails it is for lack of emotion, not for lack of formal adaptability. There never was a religion so adaptable and catholic as art. And now that the young movement begins to cast about for a home in which to preserve itself and live, what more natural than that it should turn to the one religion of unlimited forms and ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... 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

... automobile driving, agricultural work, police work, they have been found efficient beyond precedent and intelligent beyond precedent. And in the munition factories, in the handling of heavy and often difficult machinery, and in adaptability and inventiveness and enthusiasm and steadfastness their achievement has been astonishing. More particularly in relation to intricate mechanical work is ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... force, of his intense and magnetic personality, after the vast responsibilities of government were thrown upon him at the age of fifty-two, furnish a rare and striking illustration of the marvellous capacity and adaptability of the human intellect—of the sound mind in the sound body. He came to the discharge of the great duties of the Presidency with absolutely no experience in the administration of government, or of the vastly varied and complicated questions of foreign and domestic policy ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... fan-shape from the arch, and encountered a grassy terrace running to the right and about on a level with the tips of the oaks and cottonwoods below. Scattered here and there upon this shelf were clumps of aspens, and he walked through them into a glade that surpassed in beauty and adaptability for a wild home, any place he had ever seen. Silver spruces bordered the base of a precipitous wall that rose loftily. Caves indented its surface, and there were no detached ledges or weathered sections that might dislodge a ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... be concerned with the veracity of the matter of his verses—even leaving out of the question his enmity towards the House of Borgia, which will transpire later. For him a ben trovato was as good matter as a truth, or better. He measured its value by its piquancy, by its adaptability to ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... believes what he says, or has persuaded himself 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

... his revulsion. "You see, we were forced to take our subjects largely at random with regard to individual characteristics, mental attitudes, adaptability, et cetera." As long as he stuck to high order abstractions, he could control himself. "Aside from their professional lack of repugnance for violence, we took soldiers from battlefields because we could select men facing immediate death, whose removal ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire



Words linked to "Adaptability" :   adaptable, pliantness, pliancy, pliability, unadaptability, ability, flexibility, suppleness, flexibleness



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