impressionable

From French impressionnable. See also impressible.

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.

   • 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.

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.

• impressionable in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.