complaisant
Other forms: complaisantly
If only the world were populated entirely with complaisant people! Complaisant means willing to do something to please others, and complaisant people or animals are wonderful to be around.
Don't confuse complaisant with its near-homonym complacent. Both derive from the Latin complacere "to please," but while complaisant means willing to do something to please another, complacent means smug and self-satisfied, something that you want to avoid when you're on the winning team.
-
showing a cheerful willingness to do favors for otherssynonyms: obliging
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
complicit / complacent / complaisant
Vocabulary lists containing complaisant
In this short story, Dr. Heidegger invites four elderly men to drink water that he claims is from the fountain of youth. Read the full text here. Here are links to our lists for other works by Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, The House of the Seven Gables, Feathertop, Rappaccini's Daughter, The Minister's Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown, The Birthmark
In this collection of twelve essays, the leader of New England's transcendentalist movement shares his philosophical ideas on different aspects of mid-nineteenth-century life. Read the full text here.
As you read Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (etext found here), learn this word list for the short story. Here are links to our lists for texts by Hawthorne: Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, The Scarlet Letter