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COMPLACENT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Contented to a fault with oneself or one's actions
Example:
his self-satisfied dignity
Synonyms:
complacent; self-complacent; self-satisfied
Classified under:
Similar:
content; contented (satisfied or showing satisfaction with things as they are)
Derivation:
complacence; complacency (the feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself)
Context examples:
Mr. Omer, with a very complacent and amiable face, took several puffs in silence; and then said, resuming his first point: Accordingly we're obleeged, in ascertaining how Barkis goes on, to limit ourselves to Em'ly.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
As I think of them going up and down before those schoolroom windows—the Doctor reading with his complacent smile, an occasional flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of his head; and Mr. Dick listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits calmly wandering God knows where, upon the wings of hard words—I think of it as one of the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
