complacency

American  

[kuhm-play-suhn-see] / kəmˈpleɪ sən si /

Also complacence

noun

• complacencies
  plural

1. a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

2. Archaic.

   1. friendly civility; inclination to please; complaisance.

   2. a civil act.

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complacency British  

/ kəmˈpleɪsənsɪ /

noun

1. a feeling of satisfaction, esp extreme self-satisfaction; smugness

2. an obsolete word for complaisance

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• noncomplacence
  noun
• noncomplacency
  noun
• overcomplacence
  noun
• overcomplacency
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• complacencies
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of complacency

From the Medieval Latin word complacentia, dating back to 1635–45. See complacent, -cy

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Explanation

The word complacency is often hurled, in a rather scornful manner, at people who are unwilling to be political. It connotes a sense of ease and contentment with the status quo. It is a rare thing to hear the word complacency used in a purely positive way; there's always a sense of scolding to it. At best it's used to convey a person's satisfaction: "Oh? No one asked you to the prom? I've been asked three times," she said with complacency. More commonly, however, it takes on a political tone, as with large bodies of people who are unwilling to protest corruption because it doesn't touch them: "He preached and argued, but it was impossible to jostle the students from their complacency."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

complacency complacencies

His protagonist is a writer who’s trying to build a relationship with his grandchild, Ben, while navigating the half-suppressed scorn of his daughter-in-law and the irritated complacency of his son.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026

Other people might call it complacency or boredom.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026

But Grande does perpetuate a silence, complacency, and enabling by painting genuine concern as gossipy chatter.

From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026

Ostensibly anchored to the dancefloor, it's a record that uses dance music to shake the listener out of complacency.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

Stamped out not merely by fear but by being forgotten, by the complacency of the world around her.

From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed

The rudder in her work, and in her thinking, is this aversion to, and constant vigilance against, easy complacencies and groupthink.

From New York Times ● Jul. 18, 2018

“Our contexts are not the same, our struggles are not the same, and so our rebellions and complacencies and conformities and compromises cannot be compared.”

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 6, 2017

The financial crisis taught us that long-held assumptions and complacencies can and will fall apart in a subprime minute.

From BusinessWeek ● Feb. 27, 2012

George Eliot, who tried to learn comedy from Dickens but didn't quite have the ear for it, is forever shaking us out of our complacencies.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 8, 2010

It has not the usual qualities of the reverie, for it does not hover about our personal complacencies and humiliations.

From The Mind in the Making The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform by James Harvey Robinson

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