impressionable

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From French impressionnable. See also impressible.

Adjective[edit]

impressionable (comparative more impressionable, superlative most impressionable)

  1. Being easily influenced (especially of young people).
    • 1908, Elizabeth Strong Worthington, How to Cook Husbands, Library of Alexandria, →ISBN:
      I had never been an impressionable girl as far as men were concerned—I was not an impressionable woman.
    • 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:
      "Panbek is impressionable and full of emotion, with the temperament of the poet and all those little weaknesses, if we may call them so, which the poet pays as a ransom for his gifts."
    • 2003, Jerilyn Fisher, Ellen S. Silber, Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 240:
      As a result, Miss Brodie calls on her authority over her "impressionable" students in order to urge them into roles she herself is too afraid to occupy.
    • 2011, Jamie Carlin Watson, Robert Arp, What's Good on TV?: Understanding Ethics Through Television, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN:
      Sages and mothers have long noted that humans, especially young humans, are impressionable. It is supposed that the environment that one inhabits plays a large role in a child's behavioral and moral development.

Translations[edit]

Noun[edit]

impressionable (plural impressionables)

  1. An impressionable person.
    • 1942, Frank Gervasi, War Has Seven Faces:
      They were the faces of the same gentlemen who plied the corruptibles in Rumania with cash and impressed the impressionables with Germany's power.

References[edit]