COMPLAISANT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does complaisant mean? 

• COMPLAISANT (adjective)
  The adjective COMPLAISANT has 1 sense:

1. showing a cheerful willingness to do favors for others

  Familiarity information: COMPLAISANT used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMPLAISANT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing a cheerful willingness to do favors for others

Synonyms:

complaisant; obliging

Context example:

the obliging waiter was in no hurry for us to leave

Similar:

accommodating; accommodative (helpful in bringing about a harmonious adaptation)

Derivation:

complaisance (a disposition or tendency to yield to the will of others)

 Context examples 

The behaviour of the young colt and foal appeared very modest, and that of the master and mistress extremely cheerful and complaisant to their guest.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He evidently tried to please her: he was gallant, he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this necklace—she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and a friend.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

But he had fancied her in love with him; that evidently must have been his dependence; and after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head, Emma was obliged in common honesty to stop and admit that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy, like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The next morning, however, made an alteration; for in a quarter of an hour's tete-a-tete with Mrs. Bennet before breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress might be found for it at Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The people, who had often heard of me, were very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand, that I might be more conveniently seen.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)