| / English Dictionary |
COMPLACENCY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself
Example:
his complacency was absolutely disgusting
Synonyms:
complacence; complacency; self-complacency; self-satisfaction
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("complacency" is a kind of...):
satisfaction (the contentment one feels when one has fulfilled a desire, need, or expectation)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "complacency"):
smugness (an excessive feeling of self-satisfaction)
Derivation:
complacent (contented to a fault with oneself or one's actions)
Context examples:
Their brother, indeed, was the only one of the party whom she could regard with any complacency.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
In short, she sat, during the first visit, looking at Jane Fairfax with twofold complacency; the sense of pleasure and the sense of rendering justice, and was determining that she would dislike her no longer.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
On the morrow they were walking about together with true enjoyment, and every succeeding morrow renewed a tete-a-tete which Sir Thomas could not but observe with complacency, even before Edmund had pointed it out to him.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
She liked him, however, upon the whole, much better than she had expected, and in her heart was not sorry that she could like him no more;—not sorry to be driven by the observation of his Epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with complacency on the remembrance of Edward's generous temper, simple taste, and diffident feelings.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
She felt that Jane's feelings, though fervent, were little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air and manner not often united with great sensibility.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
She felt all the honest pride and complacency which her alliance with the present and future proprietor could fairly warrant, as she viewed the respectable size and style of the building, its suitable, becoming, characteristic situation, low and sheltered—its ample gardens stretching down to meadows washed by a stream, of which the Abbey, with all the old neglect of prospect, had scarcely a sight—and its abundance of timber in rows and avenues, which neither fashion nor extravagance had rooted up.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Sir Thomas himself was watching her progress down the dance with much complacency; he was proud of his niece; and without attributing all her personal beauty, as Mrs. Norris seemed to do, to her transplantation to Mansfield, he was pleased with himself for having supplied everything else: education and manners she owed to him.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
After a few moments' chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that Fanny was yet uninformed of her sister's being there, quitted the room in quest of her; and Elinor was left to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the gay unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner while enjoying so unfair a division of his mother's love and liberality, to the prejudice of his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated course of life, and that brother's integrity, was confirming her most unfavourable opinion of his head and heart.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Her resistance had not injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Bingley: I can guess the subject of your reverie.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
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