These words refer to a willingness to be managed, led, taught or trained. Docile stresses a complete lack of unruliness that makes for easy handling; the word comes from a Latin root meaning teachable and it often appears in the context of education: docile pupils. Amenable , by contrast, suggests most strongly a good-willed openness to suggestions or recommendations, but the word does not imply the built-in acquiescent temperament of docile: teenagers may not be the most docile creatures imaginable, but they are more amenable to sympathetic guidance than most parents think.

Tractable suggests manageability to an even greater degree than docile . It comes from a Latin word meaning to handle; this is reflected in its use applying to the willingness of people to be led: a tractable audience that was willing to listen as long as the speaker had voice to exhort them with. The word can give a tone that is not very flattering to the people it describes, since it can seem to discuss human beings as though they were material or inanimate substance to be manipulated, a substance having no will of its own.

Tame and submissive point to the greatest amount of servility suggested by any of these words. With tame , the servility may be innate or ingrained, as with domesticated animals: a tame horse. A tame animal may, however, be far from docile in temperament. Submissive at its mildest can indicate nothing more than meek humility before one’s superiors, but in any case it suggests an extremely responsive attitude towards the needs, desires or whims of another, sometimes to the point of humiliating adjectness: the ideally submissive wife of the Victorian era.