placid

From French placide, from Latin placidus (“peaceful, calm, placid”), from placeō (“please, satisfy”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈplæs.ɪd/

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• Rhymes: -æsɪd

placid (comparative placider, superlative placidest)

1. calm and quiet; peaceful; tranquil

   a placid disposition

   a placid lake

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 9, in Jane Eyre‎, HTML edition:

     April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration.

   • 1941, Ogden Nash, "The Ant", in The Face is Familiar, Garden City Publishing Company, page 224.

     The ant has made himself illustrious / Through constant industry industrious. / So what? / Would you be calm and placid / If you were full of formic acid?

   • 2014 October 21, Oliver Brown, “Oscar Pistorius jailed for five years – sport afforded no protection against his tragic fallibilities: Bladerunner's punishment for killing Reeva Steenkamp is but a frippery when set against the burden that her bereft parents, June and Barry, must carry [print version: No room for sentimentality in this tragedy, 13 September 2014, p. S22]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Sport)‎:

     [I]n the 575 days since [Oscar] Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, there has been an unseemly scramble to construct revisionist histories, to identify evidence beneath that placid exterior of a pugnacious, hair-trigger personality.

• placidness
• placidity