What's the difference between amiable and complaisance?

Amiable


Definition:

  • (a.) Lovable; lovely; pleasing.
  • (a.) Friendly; kindly; sweet; gracious; as, an amiable temper or mood; amiable ideas.
  • (a.) Possessing sweetness of disposition; having sweetness of temper, kind-heartedness, etc., which causes one to be liked; as, an amiable woman.
  • (a.) Done out of love.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Normandie Design is plum in the middle of the amiable chaos of South American city life, in Santa Efigênia, where the streets are thronged with tiny electronics stores – great if you fancy a fake Chinese iPhone.
  • (2) Graf said that the idea of partnerships - such as technology sharing and bolstering regional and local news by other broadcasters - raised the question of when "amiable cooperation becomes anti-competitive cartel".
  • (3) An amiable and professional friendship was quickly established between myself and the nursing staff that was based on mutual respect.
  • (4) Let's amble amiably together, towards the announcement.
  • (5) But on the whole "Eck" is amiable, making time for reporters, giving spot interview after spot interview, chatting to anyone who catches his attention, whether from a major UK paper or a Netherlands radio station he has never heard of, all very different from the increasingly tightly controlled appearances of UK leaders.
  • (6) Further on, an Emirati sheikh chatted amiably with an Iraqi MP wanted on charges of terrorism.
  • (7) And it continues today, the discourse and the amiable discord, by turns legalistic, linguistic, poetic, artistic, metaphysical, practical, transcendental, earthy, comedic.
  • (8) Amiable, wise and pink-cheeked, with the same taste for the finer things we have witnessed in certain popes – let us remember Benedict’s red leather loafers – it’s all but impossible, once you’ve read his new novel, not to imagine how fabulous he would look in a white zucchetto , with a cape to match, and a socking great ring on his finger for journalists to kiss as they try desperately not to reveal the sin of envy in his presence (before he was a million-selling novelist, Harris was a hack just like them – and me).
  • (9) Ochola, an amiable man, insists that he has written to the ministry of energy to plead Katine's case, but has had no joy.
  • (10) Small children adored this highly coloured quartet of amiable toddler-people.
  • (11) My housemate was an amiable soul named Herbert Pocket.
  • (12) His exclamatory sock-cymbal sound, often played at the turning point in a theme, or at the close, appeared to be struck with a dismissive blow like a boxer's right cross, and would be all the more arresting for its contrast with Jones's general demeanour of happiness in his work, smiling fit to bust, unleashing a stream of effusive - and highly rhythmic - chortles and grunts, sometimes eyeballing his partners with baleful amiability from the drum stool while intensifying the pressure, as if baiting them into bigger risks.
  • (13) His maternal grandfather was the amiably colourful mayor of Boston, John Francis Fitzgerald, the child of immigrants and the first Irish Catholic to achieve such power in the then-English – or "Boston Brahmin" – dominated-political landscape of New England.
  • (14) (Las Vegas's current mayor, the amiably savvy Oscar Goodman, made his reputation as a lawyer defending mobsters.)
  • (15) Only in much later life did his fondness for the place grow as he became an occasional and amiable visitor to it.
  • (16) In one penalty area, Richard Dunne and Thierry Henry sit chatting in what seems genuinely like a very amiable fashion.
  • (17) In an alternate reading, the snarl-up was not designed to punish the amiable Sokolich but New Jersey senate leader Loretta Weinberg, whose district is in Fort Lee, because she blocked Christie's supreme court nominees.
  • (18) The critical course of the terminal phases of the cancer-patient needs a cautious and amiable attendment.
  • (19) GCHQ, he says, is seen as "a club of amiable gentlemen in shabby tweed jackets," probably still fighting the Nazis.
  • (20) "It was a very … interesting time," he says amiably, with the benefit of 14 years' reflection.

Complaisance


Definition:

  • (n.) Disposition to please or oblige; obliging compliance with the wishes of others; a deportment indicative of a desire to please; courtesy; civility.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Although it is not the role of peer review to police research integrity and identify fraud or misconduct," the committee's chair, Labour MP Andrew Miller said yesterday, "we found the general oversight of research integrity in the UK to be unsatisfactory and complaisant."
  • (2) The results show that the subjects--apart from diagnosis--perceive ego-blocking situations as frustrating and react to them in a non-aggressive way (depreciating the conflict, complaisant reactions, passivity).