Word of the Day
: December 2, 2024complaisant
playWhat It Means
Someone described as complaisant is willing or eager to please other people, or is easily convinced to do what other people want.
// Derek was a complaisant boy, always happy to oblige whenever his mother or father asked him to run an errand.
// She was too complaisant to say no to her sister's demands.
complaisant in Context
“Last month Ferrari lofted its banners over a resort near the southern port of Cagliari and invited journalists to test-drive the new Ferrari Roma Spider, taking advantage of the excellent tarmac, ideal weather and complaisant authorities.” — Dan Neil, The Wall Street Journal, 5 Oct. 2023
Did You Know?
Complaisant and complacent are often confused, and for good reason. Not only do the words look and sound alike, but they also both come from Latin verb complacēre, meaning “to please greatly.” (The placēre in complacēre is an ancestor of the English word please). Complacent is used disapprovingly to describe someone who is self-satisfied or unconcerned with whatever is going on, but it also shares with complaisant the sense of “inclined to please or oblige.” This sense of complacent is an old one, but that hasn’t kept language critics from labeling its use as an error—and on the whole, modern writers do prefer complaisant for this meaning. Whether you complaisantly oblige, well, that’s up to you.
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Test Your Vocabulary
Rearrange the letters to form a noun that refers to an opponent who is easy to defeat or a victim who is capable of no effective resistance: VHEPRUOS
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