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

Etymology

Origin of complacency

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

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

Other people might call it complacency or boredom.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026

But Mr. Blaževičius depicts with a deadpan ruthlessness the pull of complacency, the ease of lapsing back into lives full of compromise and myopia.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026

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

From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026

"There was this complacency and failure to recognise that there's been a step change in extreme weather, and that this will continue because the globe continues to warm," he told AFP.

From Barron's ● Aug. 3, 2026

Guarding against complacency, Ebright allowed himself, when his crew reached the dock, only a gruff “You looked good out there for a change.”

From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown

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

Why should I deprive you of one of the little complacencies of unselfishness?

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 by Various