SELF-COMPLACENCY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does self-complacency mean? 

• SELF-COMPLACENCY (noun)
  The noun SELF-COMPLACENCY has 1 sense:

1. the feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself

  Familiarity information: SELF-COMPLACENCY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SELF-COMPLACENCY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

complacence; complacency; self-complacency; self-satisfaction

Context example:

his complacency was absolutely disgusting

Hypernyms ("self-complacency" is a kind of...):

satisfaction (the contentment one feels when one has fulfilled a desire, need, or expectation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "self-complacency"):

smugness (an excessive feeling of self-satisfaction)

Derivation:

self-complacent (contented to a fault with oneself or one's actions)

 Context examples 

By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

After a few moments' chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that Fanny was yet uninformed of her sister's being there, quitted the room in quest of her; and Elinor was left to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the gay unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner while enjoying so unfair a division of his mother's love and liberality, to the prejudice of his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated course of life, and that brother's integrity, was confirming her most unfavourable opinion of his head and heart.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)