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CONTENTMENT
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Happiness with one's situation in life
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("contentment" is a kind of...):
happiness (emotions experienced when in a state of well-being)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "contentment"):
satisfaction (the contentment one feels when one has fulfilled a desire, need, or expectation)
Antonym:
discontentment (a longing for something better than the present situation)
Derivation:
content (satisfy in a limited way)
Context examples:
I'm so full of happiness, that if Father was only here, I couldn't hold one drop more, said Beth, quite sighing with contentment as Jo carried her off to the study to rest after the excitement, and to refresh herself with some of the delicious grapes the 'Jungfrau' had sent her.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Could he have seen the heart, he would have cared very little for the lungs; but without the most distant imagination of the impending evil, without the slightest perception of any thing extraordinary in the looks or ways of either, he repeated to them very comfortably all the articles of news he had received from Mr. Perry, and talked on with much self-contentment, totally unsuspicious of what they could have told him in return.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Some more of the Careys came to dinner, and they had the pleasure of sitting down nearly twenty to table, which Sir John observed with great contentment.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Your retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of innocence.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
She looked forward to our union with placid contentment, not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes had impressed, that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness might soon dissipate into an airy dream and leave no trace but deep and everlasting regret.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
As he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman's passion for a French dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough, no doubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
As to our own representative, the well-known athlete and international Rugby football player, E. D. Malone, he looks trained to a hair, and as he surveyed the crowd a smile of good-humored contentment pervaded his honest but homely face.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
She, who had seen her week after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by anguish of heart which she had neither courage to speak of, nor fortitude to conceal, now saw with a joy, which no other could equally share, an apparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as she trusted of serious reflection, must eventually lead her to contentment and cheerfulness.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
The evening was spent chiefly in talking over Hertfordshire news, and telling again what had already been written; and when it closed, Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to meditate upon Charlotte's degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding, and composure in bearing with, her husband, and to acknowledge that it was all done very well.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me—working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, 'all that is right:' for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and animated complexion.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
