COMPLACENCY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does complacency mean? 

• COMPLACENCY (noun)
  The noun COMPLACENCY has 1 sense:

1. the feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself

  Familiarity information: COMPLACENCY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMPLACENCY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

complacence; complacency; self-complacency; self-satisfaction

Context example:

his complacency was absolutely disgusting

Hypernyms ("complacency" is a kind of...):

satisfaction (the contentment one feels when one has fulfilled a desire, need, or expectation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "complacency"):

smugness (an excessive feeling of self-satisfaction)

Derivation:

complacent (contented to a fault with oneself or one's actions)

 Context examples 

"Shall you be in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" said she with all her accustomary complacency.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Mrs. Norris was all delight and volubility; and even Fanny had something to say in admiration, and might be heard with complacency.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The word home made his father look on him with fresh complacency.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Jane met her with a smile of such sweet complacency, a glow of such happy expression, as sufficiently marked how well she was satisfied with the occurrences of the evening.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Catherine did not hear enough of this speech to understand or be pained by it; and other subjects being studiously brought forward and supported by Henry, at the same time that a tray full of refreshments was introduced by his servant, the general was shortly restored to his complacency, and Catherine to all her usual ease of spirits.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I was casting my eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar objects, when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and Mr. Spenlow, in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying in, taking off his hat as he came.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He was certainly better pleased to hand her into the barouche than to assist her in ascending the box, and his complacency seemed confirmed by the arrangement.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

She saw with maternal complacency all the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)