Find the word definition

Crossword clues for pacify

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
pacify
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ As I drove home, I tried to think how I was going to pacify my wife, who was sure to be angry.
▪ It was no use trying to pacify him; he was simply too upset.
▪ On August 20, the army recaptured the city and pacified the surrounding area.
▪ They had to use drugs to pacify him.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But it will also be needed to pacify old adversaries, and to prevent small crises from becoming big ones.
▪ But the expulsion did not pacify the Tory civil war, as the contenders traded recriminations.
▪ By saying the war was over, the territory pacified, they would make it so.
▪ Some critics question its sustainability and others view it as a sop to pacify the poor.
▪ They will be met with measures that no longer seek to pacify but only to contain.
▪ When we pacified the bopping gang of a decade ago, its members turned to narcotics and self-mutilation.
▪ Yucatan, although not completely pacified, had been reincorporated into the federal union in July.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pacify

Pacify \Pac"i*fy\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Pacified; p. pr. & vb. n. Pacifying.] [F. pacifier, L. pacificare; pax, pacis, peace + -ficare (in comp.) to make. See Peace, and -fy.] To make to be at peace; to appease; to calm; to still; to quiet; to allay the agitation, excitement, or resentment of; to tranquillize; as, to pacify a man when angry; to pacify pride, appetite, or importunity. ``Pray ye, pacify yourself.''
--Shak.

Syn: lenify, assuage, appease, mollify, placate, gentle, gruntle.

To pacify and settle those countries.
--Bacon.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
pacify

late 15c., "appease, allay the anger of (someone)," from Middle French pacifier "make peace," from Latin pacificare "to make peace; pacify," from pacificus (see pacific). Of countries or regions, "to bring to a condition of calm," c.1500, from the start with suggestions of submission and terrorization. Related: Pacified; pacifying.\n\n\n

Wiktionary
pacify

vb. 1 (context transitive English) To bring peace to (a place or situation), by ending war, fighting, violence, anger or agitation. 2 (context transitive English) To appease (someone).

WordNet
pacify
  1. v. cause to be more favorably inclined; gain the good will of; "She managed to mollify the angry customer" [syn: lenify, conciliate, assuage, appease, mollify, placate, gentle, gruntle]

  2. fight violence and try to establish peace in (a location); "The U.N. troops are working to pacify Bosnia"

  3. [also: pacified]

Usage examples of "pacify".

Rhodes pacified him, though, by congratulating him heartily on the new line of work, asking to see further studies, promising to take the topic of renewed biogenesis up at the very next meeting of the directors.

Dolfin then came on deck, but they were compelled to listen to the chaplain, and to promise, in order to pacify the vile rabble, that they would land me at the first opportunity.

Hamilton approached him, submissively, looking down, and knelt before him, the monster, putting her head to the stone, desperate to pacify him, in her femaleness to make obeisance to the male in him, to be pleasing to him, to plead with him for her life.

Mama Nilla was desperately trying to pacify him with a squeeze bottle of formula with one hand while holding a reddening gauze pad to the forehead of a crying five-year-old with the other.

I came to the oil camp, then visited the nearby Pacifico, the pacified Indian village.

But Vendusos gave him a bottle of raki and several pounds of cod as payment, and the monk was pacified.

The problem of imperial administration is thus to manage this process of integration and therefore to pacify, mobilize, and control the separated and segmented social forces.

Evangeline Shreck had silenced or at least pacified the need when she was with him.

She measured off the breadths kinder trembly, and seemed so anxious to pacify me that she got it a leetle shorter in the back than it wuz in the front.

In the tribe of the Dakotas the relatives of a dead chief pacified his spirit by amputating a finger.

In the meane season Thrasillus not able to refraine any longer, before Charites had asswaged her dolor, before her troubled mind had pacified her fury, even in the middle of all her griefes, while she tare her haire and rent her garments, demanded her in marriage, and so without shame, he detected the secrets and unspeakeable deceipts of his heart.

Rede, the resident Commissioner, arrives, and endeavours to pacify the people by speechifying, but it will not do.

Then Brummel leaned forward with a strange smile on his face, his hands folded tightly on the desk and his gray eyes giving Marshall that same numbing, penetrating strangely pacifying gaze.

In almost the same breath, he defeated the Somalis, and pacified the restless Eritrean Muslims.

It shall suffice, therefore, to inform him, that Lady Bellaston grew more and more pacified, and at length believed, or affected to believe, his protestations, that his meeting with Sophia that evening was merely accidental, and every other matter which the reader already knows, and which as Jones set before her in the strongest light, it is plain that she had in reality no reason to be angry with him.