compliance

/kəmˈplaɪəns/

/kəmˈplaɪəns/

Other forms: compliances

Compliance is what you do when you try to fit standards set down by someone else. A restaurant chef's compliance with a new sugar-free menu might inspire even the pastry chefs to follow the recipes.

Plywood helps illustrate the "pli" in compliance, because if you've ever stepped on a piece of plywood stretched across something, you've felt how it gives underneath your feet. It has flexibility. Compliance means being flexible or yielding and giving in to a situation or order. "Pliant" is part of the word compliance, and it means yielding. Agreeing or bending to something like a plan, rule, or direction is compliance.

Definitions of compliance

1. noun

   the act of submitting; usually surrendering power to another
   synonyms: submission

   types:

   obedience, obeisance

   the act of obeying; dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person

   prostration

   abject submission; the emotional equivalent of prostrating your body

   truckling

   the act of obeying meanly (especially obeying in a humble manner or for unworthy reasons)

   type of:

   group action

   action taken by a group of people
2. noun

   a disposition or tendency to yield to the will of others
   synonyms: complaisance, compliancy, deference, obligingness

   type of:

   agreeability, agreeableness

   a temperamental disposition to be agreeable
3. noun

   acting according to certain accepted standards
   synonyms: abidance, conformation, conformity

   antonyms:

   noncompliance

   the failure to obey

   types:

   formality

   compliance with formal rules

   line

   acting in conformity

   honoring, observance

   conformity with law or custom or practice etc.

   keeping

   conformity or harmony

   punctilio

   strict observance of formalities

   type of:

   cooperation

   joint operation or action