complacent
adjective
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Complaisant or Complacent?
The homophones complaisant and complacent are often confused - and no wonder. Not only do they look and sound alike, but they also both derive ultimately from Latin complacēre, meaning "to please greatly." Complacent usually means "self-satisfied" or "unconcerned," but it also shares with complaisant the sense of "marked by an inclination to please or oblige." This sense of complacent is an old one, but that hasn't kept language critics from labeling it as an error - and on the whole, modern writers do prefer complaisant for this meaning. Conversely, complaisant is sometimes mistakenly used in contexts such as "complaisant about injustices," where complacent, with its sense of "marked by self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies," should go. One aid is to remember that with the preposition "about," you probably want complacent.
Synonyms
Examples of complacent in a Sentence
Donald Hall, Atlantic, October 1996
Mr. Davis organized his second great quintet in the mid-60's, but by then jazz had taken a new turn and many felt he had become passé, a complacent peacock.
—Gary Giddins, New York Times Book Review, 15 Oct. 1989
… he hopes to break through the reader's complacent indifference, make him aware of his predicament, and force him to take sides.
—Monroe K. Spears, American Ambitions, 1987
Lord Lathkill … was so completely unostentatious, so very willing to pay all the attention to me, and yet so subtly complacent, so unquestionably sure of his position.
—D. H. Lawrence, The Complete Short Stories Volume III, (1922) 1981
The strong economy has made people complacent.
We have grown too complacent over the years.
We can't afford to be complacent about illiteracy.
Ryan Faughnder, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2024
Glazer has made an oddly complacent movie for an amoral era.
—Armond White, National Review, 20 Mar. 2024
See all Example Sentences for complacent 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'complacent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Complacent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complacent. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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complacent
adjective
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