What's the difference between complacent and contemptuous?

Complacent


Definition:

  • (a.) Self-satisfied; contented; kindly; as, a complacent temper; a complacent smile.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It arguably became too comfortable for Rodgers' team, with complacency and slack defending proving a dangerous brew.
  • (2) Such margins would be enough to put the first female president in the White House, but Democrats are guarding against complacency.
  • (3) He continued: "There's quite a lot of complacency going on and self-delusion going on.
  • (4) This posture of racially tinged complacency underlies most of the frequent backlashes endured by western feminists.
  • (5) Extensive research among the Afghan National Army – 68 focus groups – and US military personnel alike concluded: "One group sees the other as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group [the US soldiers] generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals.
  • (6) "One [of the dangers] is complacency, generated by a few quarters of good economic data.
  • (7) And if he wins substantially, it is quite possible that he will feel comfortable and complacent and focus again on his nationalist agenda rather than the economy.” At the standing bar, Tani, a striking figure in his dark-blue kimono and a trilby, puts down his drink, pauses, and recalls the time he spent working abroad.
  • (8) His approach, however, will be challenged by Labour, which this week accused the chancellor of "breathtaking complacency".
  • (9) But we shouldn’t be complacent – less than half of GCSE students are taking a foreign language, and more need to carry their languages forward into their careers and lives for the UK to really profit on the world stage - both culturally and economically.
  • (10) Perhaps it was a little bit of complacency, a sense that their mere presence on the pitch would be sufficient to beat Newcastle, but collectively they rarely matched Klopp’s dynamism in the technical area.
  • (11) The barrier to Rio is high and Pavey is not complacent: to ensure automatic qualification she will have to finish first in the trials and reach the 10,000m Olympic qualifying standard of 32min 15sec.
  • (12) But let's abandon any complacency that such injustice could not happen again.
  • (13) Applications and limitations of the findings to the problem of complacency in automated systems are discussed.
  • (14) The director of public prosecutions issued a timely warning against complacency this week.
  • (15) A recent survey of 1,002 people in Wales has supported these earlier findings, but found additionally that discriminatory and complacent attitudes on AIDS or towards people with the 'AIDS virus' are held by a significant proportion of the population.
  • (16) Mike Penning, the road safety minister, said: "I am not complacent about road safety even though Britain has some of the safest roads in the world.
  • (17) Meanwhile, an influential cross-party Westminster committee of MPs and peers has accused the UK government's national security council of complacency for failing to carry out any assessment about the impact Scotland's independence would have on the UK's defence and the future of Trident.
  • (18) He wrote on Twitter on Saturday that complacency had allowed racism to prevail and reiterated those comments in a column for the Sun on Sunday.
  • (19) "But even if domestic violence remains a priority for the Crown Prosecution Service, there remains the wider issue of complacency."
  • (20) That is in large part why Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor and chairman of the cross-party pro-UK campaign Better Together, warned in a Guardian interview last week that complacency was his campaign's greatest enemy.

Contemptuous


Definition:

  • (a.) Manifesting or expressing contempt or disdain; scornful; haughty; insolent; disdainful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He was contemptuous of Nelson’s small target strategy even in the early years in opposition, insisting voters always needed to know what a party stood for, and that it should stand for big ideas.
  • (2) Sly, underhanded, contemptuous, mendacious, double-dealing, cheating democracy.
  • (3) He dictates the next rally and when Murray decides to go for another lob, Dimitrov is on to the ruse and swats a contemptuous smash away to seal the first set that flashed by in the blink of an eye!
  • (4) (Of course, she was also perfectly aware of the feminist content, what it said about the disgusted-attracted-contemptuous male gaze, but she preferred the art to ask the questions, discomfit, not preach.)
  • (5) Thatcher was contemptuous of "the centre ground" and withering about consensus politics, holding it to be responsible for Britain's postwar decline and believing it to be a recipe for getting nothing done.
  • (6) It held its first national congress in Algiers, and although it was contemptuous of existing political organisations, Poujade made his own political party, Union et Fraternité Française.
  • (7) His enemies argue that he divided Europe by launching an illegal war; he kept the UK out of the eurozone and the Schengen agreement ; he is contemptuous of democracy (surely a qualification?
  • (8) It is rife with secrecy, top-down managerial manipulation, impervious to any outside scrutiny, contemptuous of any questioning, and has embraced extensive surveillance and discriminatory policing of religious and racial minorities.
  • (9) Photograph: AAP In her famous 1913 pamphlet, Round about a pound a week , Maud Pember Reeves wrote contemptuously about “the gospel of porridge” – the idea, still common among the wealthy, that the destitute wouldn’t be so wretched if only they invested their money wisely.
  • (10) Norte Energia officials are privately contemptuous.
  • (11) The voices (which by this time had multiplied and become much more aggressive) were witheringly contemptuous about this: "You can't even SPELL schizophrenia," one of them said, "So what the hell are you going to do about having it?!"
  • (12) Facebook Twitter Pinterest The words returned to haunt Renzi for weeks afterwards, in the fitting form, for this most Twitter-friendly of premiers, of contemptuous hashtags and YouTube satire.
  • (13) Judge Alistair McCreath said: "When a defendant makes a considered decision to abscond as you did he or she has shown a contemptuous disregard for that important obligation and that in itself matters."
  • (14) "If it is false, it is libellous; if it is true, it is contemptuous," he added.
  • (15) He was contemptuous of the way a powerful lobby had manipulated Jewish American opinion, although this compared with the way "the Greek, Armenian, Ukrainian and Irish diasporas have all played an unhealthy role in perpetuating ethnic exclusivism and nationalist prejudice in the countries of their forebears".
  • (16) But a decade ago, executive leadership fell into the hands of people obsessed with "get big quick" and openly contemptuous of co-operative values.
  • (17) The campaign, according to Graham, ignored focus group research that showed people were contemptuous of the idea that electoral reform would prevent corruption.
  • (18) "He doesn't do anything that presidents do, he doesn't worry about any of the things the presidents do, but he has the White House, he has enormous power, and he'll go down in history as the president – and I suspect that he's pretty contemptuous of the rest of us."
  • (19) Delivering the prestigious Hugh Cudlipp lecture, Dacre harangued what he dubbed the "subsidariat" of newspapers - in which he included the Times and the Guardian - which do not turn a profit and are "consumed by the kind of political correctness that is patronisingly contemptuous of what it describes as ordinary people".
  • (20) Whatever I asked him about, he was fantastically hostile and contemptuous.