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Language is constantly evolving; the meanings, spellings, and pronunciations of words are reshaped over time. Take, for example, the Latin noun malleus, meaning "hammer." This word was adapted to create the Latin verb malleare, meaning "to hammer," which led eventually to the English adjective malleable. Malleable originally meant "capable of being extended or shaped by beating with a hammer," and over time adopted the broader sense "capable of being shaped, altered, or controlled." If you guessed that maul and mallet, other English words for specific types of hammers, are also modeled from malleus, you have hit the nail on the head.
Examples of malleable in a Sentence
Billy Collins, Wall Street Journal, 28–29 June 2008
At each landing the villagers had carved the wonderfully malleable silt into staircases, terraces, crenellations, and ziggurats.
—Kenneth Brower, National Geographic Traveler, March 2000
The boy seemed to me possessed by a blind, invalid arrogance, and every human being, as his eye flicked over or flinched against them, became, immediately, as malleable as his mother and his father.
—James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, 1985
the cult leader took advantage of the malleable, compliant personalities of his followers
Caoimhe O'Neill, New York Times, 14 June 2026
Relaunched as a malleable productivity tool in 2016, the app got its first million users by 2019.
—Angelica Ang, Fortune, 12 June 2026
LeBron also proved to be malleable this past season.
—Bryan Toporek, Forbes.com, 11 June 2026
These results, published in May 2025 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the forces of natural selection have made limited changes to the photosystem’s core, but that other aspects of the photosynthetic machinery have proved more malleable.
—Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for malleable
Cite this Entry
“Malleable.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malleable. Accessed 16 Jun. 2026.
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malleable
adjective
