Complaisant definition

kəm-plāsənt, -zənt
The definition of complaisant is someone who is agreeable and who wants or tries to please.

A happy-go-lucky girl who is agreeable, doesn't fight and does what others want her to do is an example of someone who is complaisant.

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Willing to do what pleases others.
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(archaic) Polite, showing respect.
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Exhibiting a desire or willingness to please; cheerfully obliging.
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Willing to please; affably agreeable; obliging.
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Origin of complaisant

  • French from Old French present participle of complaire to please from Latin complacēre complacent

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • From French complaisant (“willing to please”), from complaire, from Latin complacēre, present active infinitive of complaceō (“please well”), from com- (“with”) + placeō (“please”).

    From Wiktionary

Complaisant Sentence Examples

  • Can we really sit back and watch the suffering of a whole nation and be so complaisant?

  • Stolypin had not ventured to alter the electoral law without parliamentary consent, but with the aid of a complaisant Senate the pro- The visions of the existing law were interpreted in a restrictive second sense for the purpose of influencing the elections.

  • Pellisson.s methods of conversion, considered too slow, were accelerated by the violent persecution of Louvois and by the kings galleys, sion of until the day came when Louis XIV., deceived by the the edict clergy, crowned his record of complaisant legal methods by revoking the edict of Nantes.

  • That requires dreaming, making certain institutions permanent, and not being too complaisant.

  • It shows how a bold and p lausible adventurer, aided by the profligacy of a parasite, the avarice and hypocrisy of a confessor, and a mother's complaisant familiarity with vice, achieves the triumph of making a gulled husband bring his own unwilling but too yielding wife to shame.

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Words near complaisant in the Dictionary