pacify

pacify, appease, placate, mollify, propitiate, conciliate are comparable when they mean to quiet excited, aroused, or disturbed persons.

Pacify implies a soothing or calming of anger, grievance, or agitation, or the quelling of insurrection especially by force

{

seeing his mounting rage, friends did all they could to pacify and restrain him

}

{

second-grade troops, useful mainly to occupy parts of the country that have already been pacified— Crozier

}

Appease may indicate the quieting of agitation or insistent demand by the making of concessions

{

open in manner, easy of access, a little quick of temper but readily appeased— Buchan

}

{

he is utterly and absolutely implacable; no prayers, no human sacrifices can ever for one moment appease his cold, malignant rage— L. P. Smith

}

and it may be used in reference to appetites, desires, and passions as well as persons and to imply a giving of quietening satis-faction

{

there is always the drive to excel. Work, literacy, food and shelter ... are minimum requirements of civilization, but they will not appease this ambition— Edmund Wilson

}

{

a frantic effort to appease mounting discontent at home— Willen

}

Placate is sometimes interchangeable with appease but may imply a more complete or lasting assuagement of bitter feeling

{

each and every new route projected was liable to drastic alteration to placate local opposition— O. S. Nock

}

{

federal officials who try to placate witch-hunting Congressmen— New Republic

}

Mollify stresses softening of anger or abatement of hurt feelings by positive action (as flattery or concession)

{

the propagandist. . . must be able to mollify and perhaps even convert the hostile— Huxley

}

{

mollified when they heard that the patio, with its famous Cottonwood tree will be left intact— Green Peyton

}

Propitiate may refer to averting the anger or malevolence or winning the favor of a superior or of one possessing the power to injure greatly

{

propitiate this far-shooting Apollo— Grote)}

}

{

Aunty Rosa, he argued, had the power to beat him with many stripes ... it would be discreet in the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa— Kipling

}

{

the unlimited power of trustees to abuse their trust unless they are abjectly propitiated— H. G. Wells

}

Conciliate may be used of situations in which an estrangement or dispute is settled by arbitration or compromise

{

policy of conciliating and amalgamating conquered nations— Repplier

}

{

instinctively friendly and wholly free from inflammatory rhetoric, he did much to conciliate more stubborn Northern sentiment concerning the South— Gaines

}

Analogous words: assuage, alleviate, allay, mitigate, *relieve: *moderate, qualify, temper

Antonyms: anger