Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Exhibiting a desire or willingness to please; cheerfully obliging.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Disposed to please; pleasing in manners; compliantly disposed; exhibiting complaisance; affable; gracious; obliging.
- Synonyms Courteous, Urbane, etc. See
polite .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Desirous to please; courteous; obliging; compliant.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
compliant - adjective Willing to do what
pleases others. - adjective archaic
polite , showing respect
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective showing a cheerful willingness to do favors for others
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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They cannot rightly be called complaisant, since they do not know, but they are good creatures who cannot see farther than their nose.
Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant Guy de Maupassant 1871
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They cannot rightly be called complaisant, since they do not know, but they are good creatures who cannot see farther than their nose.
Original Short Stories — Volume 03 Guy de Maupassant 1871
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If "complaisant" was not the very last word that came to mind at the thought of Jamie Fraser, it was certainly well down toward the bottom of the list.
Dragonfly in Amber Gabaldon, Diana 1992
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If he do this with the mere intention of pleasing he is said to be "complaisant," according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 6): whereas if he do it with the intention of making some gain out of it, he is called a "flatterer" or "adulator."
Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province Aquinas Thomas
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There is no good thing which knowledge does not comprehend -- Mêden estin agathon ho ouk epistêmê periechei + -- a strenuously [84] ascertained knowledge however, painfully adjusted to other forms of knowledge which may seem inconsistent with it, and impenetrably distinct from any kind of complaisant or only half-attentive conjecture.
Plato and Platonism Walter Pater 1866
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He is a sort of 'complaisant' of the President Montesquieu, to whom you have a letter.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1750 Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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He is a sort of 'complaisant' of the President Montesquieu, to whom you have a letter.
Complete Project Gutenberg Earl of Chesterfield Works Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733
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From what you have just told me, your mother has got the idea, that your husband is what is called a complaisant husband.”
Maigret and the Old Lady Simenon, Georges, 1903- 1951
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He made his move when local government in England was at its most complaisant – led by Tories who put party loyalty first and preoccupied by cuts in spending.
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Watch for his replacement by a complaisant government puppet, and a speedy and unsatisfactory end to the MPCC's foredoomed investigation.
Archive 2009-10-01 2009
kingparton commented on the word complaisant
The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar"
November 15, 2011