How To Use Complacent In A Sentence

Any measure that shakes up this self-satisfied and complacent group is to be encouraged. Times, Sunday Times
His manner was rather that of a music hall artist, complacent, even cheerful, as his one-liners provoked from his audience the rejoinders he sought.
The Banksy Effect, the term coined by journalist Max Foster several years ago, speaks to an awakening of interest in the (often illegal) interventions that artists use to call attention to the way we complacently live under larger-than-life infrastructures built (often) by one-eyed men. Dylan Kendall: Street Art: A Window to a City's Soul
I don't think they're being "canny", just complacent. Going to war
This lie of the complacent and complicit is the latter. The Epic and the Past

Guthrie considered "God Bless America" too complacent, so he wrote a folk song with overtly political verses that are sometimes omitted in performances.
In the mud of their complacently perpetuated barnyard pond, they assert that no bright-browed, bright-apparelled shining figures can be outside of fairy books, old histories, and ancient superstitions. THE KANAKA SURF
Before the Zeebrugge disaster many hauliers were frankly complacent about these matters.
As long as we remain complacent in the face of injustice ... it will continue with impunity. Another Face of Brutality
The doctor's practice in Settle has about 9,000 registered patients so we can't afford to be complacent.
This must be done in a way that does not excuse lazy or complacent money management. Times, Sunday Times
With 66 deaths on our roads every week, none of us can afford to be complacent.
But we are in no way complacent about underspends and we are taking steps to reduce them.
I have always been determined and single-minded, but you can never get complacent in this industry.
With his complacent attitude, he was no fun to work with. Times, Sunday Times
Dancing around slightly, he looked for cracks in Red's defence, throwing out small jabs to keep him complacent.
The captain of a submarine is shown observing through the periscope a broken-backed merchantman, torpedoed fair amidships and sinking by the bow, with the complacent rhyme.
And in that look is the end of innocence, of benevolent patronage, an era when strolling architects and plumy journalists can gossip complacently about how they have arranged a good time for the rest of us. The Festival of Britain, 60 years on
It relieved him to see a smile finally break through the boy's complacent state as he returned the greeting.
An innate horror at the sight of a naked sword averted him from the most just of wars; while his favourite Buckingham practised on his weakness, and his own complacent vanity rendered him an easy dupe of The Thirty Years War — Complete
There's a danger of becoming complacent if you win a few games.
While a strong currency has some virtues, officialdom is probably a little too complacent.
Being reluctant to think , unwilling to study intensively and under-stand deeply and being complacentand satisfied at negligible knowledgeall are the cause of poor intelligence, which can be germed as "foolish".
The world has become lazy and complacent. Times, Sunday Times
It's not conversation but the complacent burble of a radio on a windowsill.
She peered at him, complacent, curious, blightingly unconscious of his emotions, and the young man felt a stirring of hot impatience. The Love Affairs of Pixie
My wife, perhaps becoming complacent, went ahead across the steep traverse, lost her footing and slid at terrifyingly high speed, bumping to a halt on some rocks where the terrain levelled and badly grazing her arm.
You become dull, complacent, and unawake, and just hang out in your comfort zone and won't be bothered. C. Clinton Sidle: The Five Wisdoms Of The Mandala
Maybe it is a genetic element in that whenever we become to complacent to conformities we endanger evolution itself. OpEdNews - Diary: Dog Training; Bottom Up? Top Down? And is it a metaphor for our culture?
That is what I call snug," said Randy complacently. Canoe Boys and Campfires Adventures on Winding Waters
We cannot afford to be complacent about our health.
But our political discourse seems strangely complacent. Times, Sunday Times
There are many actions that companies can take to give staff a sense of security without making them complacent.
At a time when the English stage trafficked in romantic fripperies, he awakened complacent audiences to a host of social ills abetted by conventional morality, bourgeois respectability, and ossified institutions.
I had been complacent, even blasé, about someone who was really important to me.
But our political discourse seems strangely complacent. Times, Sunday Times
This is all rather like a dog complacently assuming that you will give him the entire turkey if he merely sits on his hind legs and limps his forepaws.
Mr Lawson is in danger of striking the market as complacent about the current account deficit.
Already, the replicative and mutative technologies of cloning and morphing have obliged us to review the complacent assumption of our unique ontological status as human subjects.
The teen horror film and the teen comedy are both about as shallow and cynically complacent as film genres can be.
But the film redeems itself when the mustached protagonist, formerly such a complacent dunce, has alien-ness thrust upon him and has to deal with the new hatreds that come with it. WATCHING: District 9
What if IBM hadn't grown so damn big and hadn't developed such a massively complacent conceit of itself and its achievements?
In their awkward approaches to the line and aw-shucks attitudes about gutter balls and unmade spares, they represent the complacent, non-competitive face of so many bowlers today.
First Cameron asked two easy-peasy questions about salt which the PM answered in his favourite strain of complacent pomposity. Gordon Brown, Charlie Whelan and Me
This is a Government that has become complacent and fatalistic. Times, Sunday Times
This sort of misbehaviour varies in degree from the black hatred and fury of an uncontrolled egotism to what verges in some cases upon justifiable criticism of slightly fatuous or self-complacent behaviour. The Shape of Things to Come
It's vastly better than it was 25 years ago but we really mustn't be complacent.
It had become a little complacent. Times, Sunday Times
Athletics now needs a leader with no pre-existing relationship to this cosy and complacent clique. Times, Sunday Times
We must not become complacent over any success.
Mother Hallam is the prototypical matriarch; the sisters-in-law are postmarital versions of Cinderella’s stepsisters — unattractive, catty, and stingy; and the materialistic sons enjoy a complacent rigidity. Rose Franken.
Nothing is 100 percent safe and nobody should be complacent at a cash machine.
It was not a complacent or narrow or inward-looking self-confidence.
This naturally entails a missionary element, bringing new revelations to the benighted souls in the art-complacent Antipodes.
Free trade is the enemy of complacent, uninventive firms. Times, Sunday Times
But as we contemplate these bitter internecine struggles we should not be too unsympathetic or complacent.
Some of these false notes proceed simply from the immense growth of every sort of facilitation -- so that people are much more free than of old to come and go and do, to inquire and explore, to pervade and generally "infest"; with a consequent loss, for the fastidious individual, of his blest earlier sense, not infrequent, of having the occasion and the impression, as he used complacently to say, all to himself. Italian Hours
Little did the complacent Bezirk know that West German accounts of the very same meetings spoke of laughter, merrymaking and private house parties.
Many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the stubble, with all the finicking coxcombry of youth, and many an older one who watched his levity out of his little round eye, with the contemptuous air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and blithesome feelings, and a few hours afterwards were laid low upon the earth. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
The wonder is how so many are still complacent about the godlike powers assumed by mere mortals, who have so far demonstrated not the least bit of trustworthiness or honesty concerning the potential of such weapons.
But that horror gave way to a more intense and thrilling emotion as he saw the face -- although strangely free from laceration or disfigurement, and impurpled and distended into the simulation of a self-complacent smile -- was a face he recognized! From Sand Hill to Pine
Despite this she managed a calm smile revealing a reserved and complacent demeanor.
Being reluctant to think , unwilling to study intensively and under-stand deeply and being complacentand satisfied at negligible knowledgeall are the cause of poor intelligence, which can be germed as "foolish".
I think we got a bit complacent. The Sun
As the minister for justice he was obviously very complacent about the letter sent to him by the fingerprint expert.
Solomon, in his seedy clothes and long white locks, seemed to be luring that decent company by the magic scream of his fiddle -- luring discreet matrons in turban-shaped caps, nay, Mrs. Crackenthorp herself, the summit of whose perpendicular feather was on a level with the Squire's shoulder -- luring fair lasses complacently conscious of very short waists and skirts blameless of front-folds -- luring burly fathers in large variegated waistcoats, and ruddy sons, for the most part shy and sheepish, in short nether garments and very long coat-tails. Silas Marner
However, residents have been warned they cannot afford to be complacent.
Or those interminable songs delivered with an earnest warble to three chords on a guitar that warned a complacent world that ‘the new times are a-comin’.
Being reluctant to think , unwilling to study intensively and under-stand deeply and being complacentand satisfied at negligible knowledgeall are the cause of poor intelligence, which can be germed as "foolish".
Anger and astonishment kept Mrs. Lilias silent, — while her old friend, in his self-complacent manner, was making known to her his political speculations. The Abbot
But established car makers cannot afford to be complacent. Times, Sunday Times
I am very happy with the figures but I am aware we cannot become complacent.
Toulouse were near full-strength but complacent. Times, Sunday Times
Then he got a bit fat and a bit complacent, and he felt slow. Times, Sunday Times
The dialogue and the acting are strained and unconvincing, and far too complacent considering the events under consideration.
`The cynosure ," said his assistant complacently, spreading the word out as if it were caviare. POLITICAL SUICIDE
Surely this is just a way of kidding ourselves, though, since it will make us complacent and unambitious?
he complacently lived out his life as a village school teacher
Maybe they thought we were some hicks from the sticks, and were a wee bit complacent, but we have demonstrated since then that we are nobody's pushovers.
But maybe we had gone into the game a little bit complacent, thinking that we had done the hard work after bouncing back on Saturday from a defeat.
It is vital that we do not get complacent about this disease.
NEW YORK—Despite some world-shaking events this year, currency investors are shrugging off the risk of future exchange-rate swings, prompting skeptics to warn that the market is getting too complacent. Currency Investors: What, Me Worry?
She's a dance and drama teacher at a Catholic high school, and aspires to age graciously without selling out to the complacent middle class.
All he said was said in his throat and nose, for it is thus the Flamands speak, but I heard him to the end of his paragraph without proffering a word of correction, whereat he looked vastly self-complacent, convinced, no doubt, that he had acquitted himself like a real born and bred “Anglais.” The Professor, by Charlotte Bronte
Most of the time he simply can't be bothered with it because he truly is lazy and complacent.
The second was made up of complacent industries relying on politicians and bureaucrats to protect them.
I think that he looked a bit complacent last season but now he looks imperious. The Sun
While most of us feel fairly complacent about the nutrients we're getting from our diets, the facts tell a very different story.
Napoleon had drowned: It was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago. Interstate 69
Teachers are far from complacent about this problem.
Free downloads are payback for years of record companies and record shops overpricing their product and becoming complacent that people will forever consume it in the same manner.
When the author seems complacent about imprisonment, it is not out of ignorance.
You only get one life, and if all you ever do with it is grow rich or complacent or comfortable or proud then you might as well not have lived at all.
But the dealers have made the most of such a complacent belief, conducting their sordid business in front of our unseeing eyes.
The danger lies in becoming too complacent.
One of the boys sleeps on a sofa while the other stares complacently at the camera, arms raised apprehensively.
But the superintendent is not complacent and is keen to reassure people there is still work to be done.
It is easy to depict them as a complacent gerontocracy immured in its certainties and unwilling to rethink the future.
We were probably a bit too complacent. The Sun
The complacent citizen looks up and sees a distant jet's contrails, whooshing along in impressive white streams.
But with recent data showing our trading partners' growth is slowing we must not be complacent. Times, Sunday Times
She washes her hands, like Pilate before the murder of Christ. ‘The poverty of the poor,’ we say complacently, ‘is due to their drinking habits and thriftlessness.’
It is all over the place and in a fast-moving world you can't be complacent or you die. Times, Sunday Times
Small and medium-sized businesses were most likely to be complacent about fraud, according to Milliken.
While this lead will shrink before polling day, you might think he'd be a tad complacent.
But we mustn't be complacent as we have to maintain and improve the village to hold this place for the summer judging in July.
Many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the stubble, with all the finicking coxcombry of youth, and many an older one who watched his levity out of his little round eye, with the contemptuous air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and blithesome feelings, and a few hours afterwards were laid low upon the earth. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
As a result he may be complacent or thoughtless about the consequences of what he says, for himself or others.
he had become complacent after years of success
I suppose there are places in America where such a show might still jolt its viewers, but to see "The Scottsboro Boys" on Broadway is to witness a nightly act of collective self-congratulation in which the right-thinking members of the audience preen themselves complacently at the thought of their own enlightenment. A Perilous Page of History to Turn
Then again, if you subtract all that guff about the complacent bourgeoisie, maybe the scene means nothing more than ‘Ew, gross!’
But he warned they must not get complacent as the conflict enters its most critical phase. The Sun
But this doesn't mean that pear-shaped women should be complacent about weight gain.
And maybe we were getting a bit complacent. The Sun
Being reluctant to think , unwilling to study intensively and under-stand deeply and being complacentand satisfied at negligible knowledgeall are the cause of poor intelligence, which can be germed as "foolish".
Often our city speaks for itself through its unique historic past, but we mustn't be complacent.
The news media should not be complacent about the fact that so relatively few people see ideological or partisan bias.
There's a danger of becoming complacent if you win a few games.
The scientific establishment can resist a new idea with such complacent zeal that even Joshua with his trumpets would have no effect.
The report is scathing about the financial incontinence of bankers and consumers but complacent about regulatory failures.
The complacent citizen looks up and sees a distant jet's contrails, whooshing along in impressive white streams.
Will it be the all-action set of first-half super heroes who swept their opponents away when they met in the Celtic League two weeks ago; or will it be the semi-retired set of complacent ramblers who turned up in the second half?
Sitting in the garden on a summer's afternoon, it's easy to become complacent about keeping your garden in tip-top condition.
The mood can shift from knockabout comedy to taut thriller in a heartbeat, which keeps the viewer from becoming complacent: One never knows what the film is going to do next.
These include euphoria, fixed and complacent ideas, uncontrollable laughter, and neuromuscular incoordination.
But he warned: 'We cannot become complacent. The Sun
Plus, decades of access to cheap oil has made us lazy and complacent about energy.
We simply cannot afford to be complacent about the future of our car industry.
She was also many of the things the writer believed must naturally follow from all the above: vapid, spoiled, rich, uninformed, rootless, and complacent.
In all of this praise, however, there is a severe danger that we might become complacent.
Often our city speaks for itself through its unique historic past, but we mustn't be complacent.
A cream marble altar stood complacently in mid-front, draped in a stunningly white tablecloth with fringes at the edges.
While many Napa barrel rooms are temples of modern cooperage, the storage at Mayacamas seems complacently disheveled. Visiting Mayacamas Vineyards, Napa Valley [guest post] | Dr Vino's wine blog
Furthermore, our data suggest that we can not be complacent about the risks of tuberculosis in the white population.
By contrast, the modern philosophers of self-esteem encourage a complacent adoration of the unperfected self.
His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world.
If it had been Lucy in whom he had shown an active interest, Maureen would have been far from complacent.
But we must not be complacent. Times, Sunday Times
Many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the stubble, with all the finicking coxcombry of youth, and many an older one who watched his levity out of his little round eye, with the contemptuous air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and blithesome feelings, and a few hours afterwards were laid low upon the earth. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
He added: 'We are not complacent. The Sun
In the mud of their complacently perpetuated barnyard pond, they assert that no bright-browed, bright-appareled, shining figures can be outside of fairy books, old histories, and ancient superstitions. “It was the Golden Fleece ready for the shearing.”
Even without KG, I'm not ready to say it's all over for the Celts and they're just going to get beat up by Superman - I mean they do wear green and they still got The morning after game 2 seemed a little complacent for guys from the #2 biggety-biggety O Golden State Of Mind
The day you become too self-complacent will be the day you stop noticing this very same nay-saying. EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Question of the week.
We humans by contrast are complacent in our incaution. Have you a radio or tv?
High gross margins enable companies to survive tough times, but they can also make management complacent. Times, Sunday Times
But that should not make anybody complacent about the developmental processes.
This allowed the police forces to become complacent - for example, how do motorists know which cameras are loaded and which are not?
They were a little bit too complacent. Times, Sunday Times
The happy and complacent resolution to the potentially tragic events, brought about apparently by a couple of five-minute heart-to-heart conversations, should satisfy no one.
When did Americans become so complacent that we remain oblivious to our severely limited number of lifeboats? Michealene Cristini Risley: Let's Face It: We've Hit the Iceberg
Leap outside your comfort zone or it will make you complacent and your work boring. The Sun
The last thing you want to do is to make a complacent audience feel more happy in their complacency.
Thus bellowed the strong voices of the men and the reedier tones of the women, while the clear little pipes of the children went up complacently. Secret Bread
The great mass of Christian people remain complacent, unaware both that the position of the Church in contemporary society is humiliating and that the cause of that humiliation is their own timid compromise with a secularism inconsistent with tenets the holding and advancement of which are the Church's chief reason for being … Finding a Place for God
Without the discomfort of necessity, people tend to become complacent, as can be gauged from the present-day Assam compared to its historically famous yesteryears.
Well, is the deed done?" the lady asked with the complacent air of a land-holder. Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873
I suspect that their attitudes to domesticity were less cosy and complacent than ours. BRITAIN BC: Life In Britain and Ireland before the Romans
Perhaps one of the dangers that the show flirts with is that an emphasis on visual rhyming may cause divergent works to look perfectly complacent.
High gross margins enable companies to survive tough times, but they can also make management complacent. Times, Sunday Times
Being reluctant to think , unwilling to study intensively and under-stand deeply and being complacentand satisfied at negligible knowledgeall are the cause of poor intelligence, which can be germed as "foolish".
Celtic's easy superiority can lead to an environment in which famous, wealthy young men become complacent and allow their behaviour to be compromised.
I had been complacent, even blasé, about someone who was really important to me.
We took it a little bit too complacent. The Sun
Thus the complacent, musing upper thought in the mind and on the lips of the proletary as he wended his way through the quiet and well-nigh deserted streets to the older part of the town. The Price
In my complacent liberal piety, ‘orthodoxy’ seemed to me for a long time to be a harmless artifact, rather like a chasuble, a decorative accessory which reminded us of the past in aesthetically pleasing, but largely irrelevant ways.
Arciris concluded her talk by urging young and old not to be complacent and to take heart.
‘There's something you want to say,’ he said, studying her complacent gaze as the even drone of the moving car overtook her senses.
They belong to a self-complacent time, and we to a time of doubt and unsatisfied aspiration, and the two spirits are unsympathetic. Voltaire
The displays were drab, too few choices, the atmosphere lacklustre, the music no good, and worst of all, the attendants were complacent and inattentive.
Being reluctant to think , unwilling to study intensively and under-stand deeply and being complacentand satisfied at negligible knowledgeall are the cause of poor intelligence, which can be germed as "foolish".
Perhaps it's not surprising that they looked a little complacent. Times, Sunday Times
Edwin Bentham was a boy, thrust by mischance into a man's body, -- a boy who could complacently pluck a butterfly, wing from wing, or cower in abject terror before a lean, nervy fellow, not half his size. THE PRIESTLY PREROGATIVE
The last thing you want to do is to make a complacent audience feel more happy in their complacency.
Being reluctant to think , unwilling to study intensively and under-stand deeply and being complacentand satisfied at negligible knowledgeall are the cause of poor intelligence, which can be germed as "foolish".
The complacent frivolity of its lavish mosaics suggests that the declining Roman empire had no apprehensions of imminent fall.
Where there is no electable opposition, indigenous, corrupt, complacent laziness becomes the norm at the top. Times, Sunday Times
Mr Lawson is in danger of striking the market as complacent about the current account deficit.
Once teams perceive a certain level of understanding and expertise in Agile practices, they risk becoming complacent and thereby losing their self-organizing ability.
Battersby calls Healey's book "difficult; it is slow moving and complacent, and at times dangerously relaxed, lacking the urgency of his life's achievement to date, A Goat's Song. The Guardian World News
The next night, in the cabin up-river, after Miriam had left them alone to what she termed their complacent silence, Garry Devereau and Steve sat a long while before the former raised a face alight with his rare mirth. Then I'll Come Back to You
Trilling was concerned that, with such a dearth of intellectual challenge, liberalism would become soft, complacent, flabby.
Maybe helmets had made us a little complacent, then. Times, Sunday Times
The rage was always there, existing beneath humdrum lives like a complacent monster unacquainted with its own power. DOUBTING THOMAS
Weather like yon is too good to last," said Mrs. Watson complacently, Purple Springs
We must not become complacent about progress.
A bald deism has undoubtedly been the creed of some of the purest and most generous men that have ever trod the earth, but none the less on that account is it in its essence a doctrine of self-complacent individualism from which society has little to hope, and with which there is little chance of the bulk of society ever sympathizing. Voltaire
The complacent frivolity of its lavish mosaics suggests that the declining Roman empire had no apprehensions of imminent fall.
Davy Conway can contribute a lot more from play while Michael John Tierney often looks too complacent on the ball while bubbling with self-confidence.
NBC's Perfect Couples is perfect as only one thing: an unwelcome reminder of the long-ago era when "must-see" NBC ruled Thursdays it's been a while, and the network was so smugly complacent it regularly filled the 8:30/7:30c half-hour between hits with cookie-cutter nonentities. Roush Review: A Thursday Logjam
Then, and because of this, the man with understanding eyes will never be deceived by complacent harangues on sacred things from such as Coombs who never lend a luckless neighbor seed-wheat, and oppress the hireling. Lorimer of the Northwest
And in a room that was quiet and sunny, working with a little complacent pucker of the lips occasionally, or raising his eyebrows and adjusting his spectacles in a pause of doubt, he looked anything but sinister, anything but the traditional "bloodhound" on the train in a man-hunt. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
State entities tend to be overcautious and complacent.
In the first of three pieces on Ha Lachma Anya, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg explores how matzah and maror remind us not to overlook what God intended to be our sacred mission in this world and not to become too complacent in our current celebratory well-being to forget the stranger, the poor and the orphan. Ari Hart: Food Justice At Your Seder Table
We can't afford to become complacent about any of our products.
My folks!" he explained to her in pantomime, the suspicion of a complacent twinkle in his eye. The Mystery at Number Six
A spokesman for City of York Council said: ‘We do not have a major problem with unruliness on buses in York, but we are not complacent and we are supporting this scheme to ensure good behaviour on buses is maintained.’
She not only watched complacently the butcheries of Alva, but she plotted and counterplotted, now offering aid to the Prince of The Age of the Reformation
Trying different things keeps you alive and stops you being complacent.
From a contemporary viewpoint, it's hard to imagine any political figure being as unguardedly complacent as Humphrey appears in "Primary," or as curiously vulnerable and assured as both Kennedy and his future first lady come off. The Man Who Held Up a Mirror to America
We have found that people with newer cars are complacent as they have security devices fitted and immobilisers.

How To Use Complacent In A Sentence

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