corrigible

English

Etymology

From Middle English corrigible, corigyble, from Old French corrigible.

Adjective

corrigible (comparative more corrigible, superlative most corrigible)

  1. Able to be corrected or set right.
    • 1859, John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, London: John W. Parker & Son, Chapter 2, p. 38,
      Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? [] it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that his errors are corrigible.
  2. (obsolete) Submissive to correction; docile.
    • c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, Scene 14,
      Wouldst thou [] see
      Thy master thus with pleach’d arms, bending down
      His corrigible neck []
    • 1994 July 25, Jack Winter, “How I met my wife”, in The New Yorker:
      Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated—as if this were something I was great shakes at—and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times.
  3. (obsolete) Deserving chastisement; punishable.
    • 1640, James Howell, Dodona’s Grove, London: H. Mosley, “Prince Rocalino’s Journey to Elaiana,” p. ,
      [] he was taken up very short, and adjudgd corrigible for such presumptuous language.
  4. (obsolete) Having power to correct; corrective.
    • c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Othello, Act I, Scene 3,
      Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for corrigible in
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Synonyms

Antonyms

Translations

See also

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