complacency

• complacence

Late Latin complacentia: compare French complaisance.

complacency (countable and uncountable, plural complacencies)

1. A feeling of contented self-satisfaction, especially when unaware of upcoming trouble.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 5:

     ... looking at Mr. George Osborne's pale interesting countenance, and those beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers, which the young gentleman himself regarded with no ordinary complacency, she thought in her little heart that in His Majesty's army, or in the wide world, there never was such a face or such a hero.

   • 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter I, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, OCLC 884653065; republished New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953, →ISBN:

     There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

   • Addison

     Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacency, if they discover none of the like in themselves.

2. An instance of self-satisfaction.

• complacent