appeasement
Britishnoun
-
the policy of acceding to the demands of a potentially hostile nation in the hope of maintaining peace
-
the act of appeasing
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A classic example of appeasement is the Munich Pact of 1938, negotiated between Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain, the prime minister of Britain, allowed Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia to Germany.
Explanation
Appeasement is the act of calming something down. A candy bar might give your hunger temporary appeasement, but eventually you'll need a real meal. The noun appeasement comes from the verb appease, which itself comes from the French words a ("to") and pais ("peace"). We wouldn't use appeasement to talk about deep inner calm, but rather satisfying demands, or bringing a turbulent situation back to calm, and in a way that often meets with disapproval. The ransom of $50,000, for instance, is an appeasement for the kidnappers.
Vocabulary lists containing appeasement
A Thousand Splendid Suns
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World War II
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Franklin Roosevelt, "Four Freedoms" (1941)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But if you take the governor at his word, and his actions weren’t meant as appeasement, what he did was bad nonetheless.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026
With hindsight, it's easy to mock Britain's policy of appeasement during the 1930s.
From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2025
At the time, Zakim said that Rolling Stone started featuring fewer of founder Jann Wenner’s rock star friends on the cover, so the lifetime subscription might have been an appeasement tactic.
From Slate ● Jun. 3, 2024
“I am saying now that I am going to work for appeasement, for conditions that will allow the country to be peaceful … let’s all hold inclusive discussions before we go to elections,” he said.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 9, 2024
Vasiljevic’s strategy of appeasement was to give him whatever he wanted, even though the item might not have been mentioned in the contract.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
