CONTENTMENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does contentment mean? 

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

1. happiness with one's situation in life

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONTENTMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Happiness with one's situation in life

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

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

happiness (emotions experienced when in a state of well-being)

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

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

Antonym:

discontentment (a longing for something better than the present situation)

Derivation:

content (satisfy in a limited way)

 Context examples 

I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God's service—I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Mrs. Gardiner about this time reminded Elizabeth of her promise concerning that gentleman, and required information; and Elizabeth had such to send as might rather give contentment to her aunt than to herself.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The questionnaire contains 58 items across 7 categories; mobility, symptoms, emotional well-being, general contentment, thinking and fatigue, family/social well-being, and additional concerns.

(Functional Assessment of Multiple Sclerosis Questionnaire, NCI Thesaurus)

Whatever the truth of it might be, and far as Elinor was from feeling thorough contentment about it, yet while she saw Marianne in spirits, she could not be very uncomfortable herself.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

The level of happiness or contentment that an individual professes, or is observed to display with regards to their life situation.

(Enjoyment of Life, NCI Thesaurus)

The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert, everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received from introductions either to old or new acquaintance.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

But it was a very different Challenger who greeted us in the morning—a Challenger with contentment and self-congratulation shining from his whole person.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Chase away your idle fears; to you alone do I consecrate my life and my endeavours for contentment.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)