What's the difference between complacent and fatuous?

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.

Fatuous


Definition:

  • (a.) Feeble in mind; weak; silly; stupid; foolish; fatuitous.
  • (a.) Without reality; illusory, like the ignis fatuus.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There certainly has been a danger that the dispute could be diverted into a chauvinistic blind alley, not least because of the cue given by Brown's cynical and fatuous use of the British National Party's slogan "British jobs for British workers", which was then thrown back in his face by the strikers.
  • (2) So far, the president has been more fatuous than fascistic, though he belatedly realized what an albatross the bill had become.
  • (3) Yet such is Britain's fatuously entitled "war on drugs".
  • (4) First, Brazil did not have any penalty appeals against Mexico , so the media’s thick-headed behaviour could not have triggered the inevitable payback on this occasion, rendering Scolari’s complaint somewhat fatuous, at least in terms of what had just happened.
  • (5) But likewise, insisting on economic deprivation, as though that is the sole context and alone explains their motivations, is only marginally less fatuous.
  • (6) It's not quite believable that height is unimportant to Sellar, although he's right that it's fatuous to chase superlatives, given that the Shard does not quite equal the 82-year-old Chrysler building in New York.
  • (7) Iran's religious minorities are arrested on fatuous charges, endure trials that violate the state's own due process, are jailed on unproven convictions and tortured in prison.
  • (8) Even if you think the Twitter storms about political “misspeaks” and “gaffes” are fatuous, consider what you did not hear after the PM’s outburst last week.
  • (9) This involves tight prioritisation – allowing yourself a certain amount of time per task – and trying not to get caught up in less productive activities, such as unstructured meetings that tend to take up lots of time.” We’ve all been there, wishing we weren’t stuck in the same room as a bunch of fatuous blowhards – or, as Michael Foley puts it in his superb book The Age of Absurdity , “the colleagues who speak at length in every meeting, in loud confident tones that suggest critical independence, but never deviate from the official line”.
  • (10) In addition, these studies also risk annoying the project's youngsters by asking them questions they perceive to be intrusive or fatuous.
  • (11) The prize in his view, though, is "not about who's the best: I think that's fatuous".
  • (12) When Phillips first spoke of sleepwalking 10 years ago , even David Miliband tut-tutted, calling his concerns “fatuous”.
  • (13) In this respect, the idea of "saving for the nation" is fatuous, jingoistic nonsense.
  • (14) ■ "Wittering inanity", "Fatuous", "Pass the jubilee sickbag".
  • (15) Shaun Spiers Chief executive, Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) • The government’s plans to build 13,000 houses for sale at just 20% off ludicrous market values is a fatuous response to the biggest housing crisis since the second world war.
  • (16) All the money and clothes and fatuous conversation have driven Bateman mad, we might think.
  • (17) "Let us quit this indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising hopes, even now, with talk of 'posthumous' conferment, when you know damned well that the Nobel committee does not indulge in such tradition.
  • (18) Not a Brexit conspiracy, but assuredly an inspiration for Boris Johnson’s fatuous and burbling battle cry of “ Independence day !” Now the Tory leadership campaign has begun and, incredibly, movie advertising is again playing its role.
  • (19) A failure to recognise this distinctiveness was well demonstrated in last year's fatuous talk about the Olympics' "growth dividend".
  • (20) In the decades that followed, Frost became a media personality and comedian, as comfortable cross-examining the most heavyweight political figures of the day as hosting Through the Keyhole, the show typifying the fatuousness of celebrity culture, in which panellists were given a video tour of a mystery famous guest's property and asked to identify the owner from the evidence.