appeasement
Britishnoun
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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.
"There is a general taboo in the media… sensible discussions about how to coexist with China can get easily branded as appeasement," he says.
From BBC • Feb. 6, 2026
For one thing, her girl’s request to get a hamster and Linda’s weary appeasement just rings all too true.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 9, 2025
People in all parts of government, industry and education are going with a strategy of appeasement, trying to get by.
From Salon • Jan. 28, 2025
In the late ’60s, the school decided to sanction the event as a safety measure, setting aside old furniture in some kind of appeasement scheme that didn’t always tame the chaos.
From Slate • May 2, 2024
They had been halfhearted tokens of penance, insincere, corrupt gestures meant more for his own appeasement than hers.
From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
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.
