Also 7 compleasance, complesence. [17th c. a. F. complaisance (14th c. in Littré) care or desire to please = Pr., Sp. complacencia, It. compiacenza, med.L. complacentia: see COMPLACENCE.]
The action or habit of making oneself agreeable; desire and care to please; compliance with, or deference to, the wishes of others; obligingness, courtesy, politeness.
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., I. xv. 76. Compleasance; that is to say, That every man strive to accommodate himselfe to the rest.
1678. Butler, Hud., III. i. 738. The Bride, That with her Wedding-cloaths undresses Her Complaisance and Gentilesses.
1689. Shadwell, Bury F., II. 152. For complaisance, and breeding sake I’ll do it.
1709. Prior, The Dove, 9. Fair Venus wept the sad disaster … In complaisance poor Cupid mourn’d.
1768. Sterne, Sent. Journ., The Pulse. If you will have the complaisance to step in.
1798. Jane Austen, Northang. Abb., iv. A lady who was sitting by her … addressed her with great complaisance.
1839. G. P. R. James, Louis XIV., I. 215. She was never treated afterwards with any degree of complaisance.
† b. In complaisance to: in deference to; as an act of politeness towards. Obs.
a. 1688. Villiers (Dk. Buckhm.), Confer., Wks. (1775), 182. Most of the inhabitants, in complaisance … to their landlord are Roman Catholicks.
1741. Monro, Anat. (ed. 3), 124. In Complaisance to prevailing Custom, I shall follow the common Terms.
c. (with pl.) An act of complaisance.
a. 1762. Lady M. W. Montague, Lett., lxxvi. 125. I have carried my complaisances to you farther than I ought.
1841. Emerson, Method Nat., Wks. 1875, II. 233. How … the complaisances we use, shame us now!
