pacific

pacific, peaceable, peaceful, irenic, pacifist, pacifistic are sometimes confused because they all involve the idea of affording or promoting peace.

But pacific applies chiefly to persons or to utterances, acts, influences, or ideas that tend to make peace or to conciliate strife

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they flung out a challenge which even the most pacific Quaker in Philadelphia had to heed— Charles & Mary Beard

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seek the settlement of disputes only by pacific means— R. H. Jackson

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the pacific policy of Walpole was regarded by them as a national humiliation— Plumb

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Peaceable also applies to persons or to their actions or words, but it describes their character or quality as peace-loving, as disposed to avoid strife, or as inclined to keep peace, rather than their aims or tendencies

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the villagers were a quiet, peaceable folk

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our king the good Simonides . . . deserves so to be called for his peaceable reign and good government— Shak.

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the Mayans were a traditionally gentle and peaceable people—Br acker

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Peaceful applies especially to a life, a condition or state, a period or age, or a country or people in which peace prevails or there is no strife, but it may apply to whatever is indicative of peace, especially of mind, or provides an opportunity for such peace

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and may at last my weary age find out the peaceful hermitage— Milton

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the peaceful countenance of the old clergyman

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thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine of peaceful years— Wordsworth

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man has laid down his weapons and resumed a peaceful way of life— Bailey

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the peaceful comportment of the seals had quieted my alarm— London

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Irenic, which applies primarily to peace in connection with religious controversy, may describe attitudes and measures likely to allay dispute

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the political equivalent of the dogfight on the human level is not made more irenic by the capacity of the participants to verbalize their animosities— Murphy

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Pieper lived to see his synod adopt a very irenic attitude towards its former antagonists— Rohne

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Pacifist and pacifistic apply chiefly to the views, arguments, writings, or attitudes of opponents of war or the use of military force for any purpose but they may also apply to the spirit or utterances of someone who conscientiously objects to wars or who would substitute arbitration for conflict in the settlement of any disputes

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pacifistic antagonism to conscription

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Grotius' paci-fistic attitude is founded on his understanding of the humanitarian and cosmopolitan aspects of natural law— Albert Salomon

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as many pacifist writers argue, international warfare has consequences for the lives of people, in terms of spiritual sickness and the brutalizing of attitudes— Gar vin

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Analogous words: *calm, placid, serene, tranquil: conciliating or conciliatory, propitiating or propitiatory, appeasing, pacifying or pacificatory (see corresponding verbs at PACIFY)

Antonyms: bellicose

Contrasted words: *belligerent, pugnacious, combative, quarrelsome, contentious