The Collaborative International Dictionary
Self-satisfaction \Self`-sat`is*fac"tion\, n. The quality or state of being self-satisfied.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1739, from self- + satisfaction. Related: Self-satisfied (1734).
Wiktionary
n. A feeling of fulfillment or contentment with respect to one's own accomplishments or situation.
WordNet
n. the feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself; "his complacency was absolutely disgusting" [syn: complacency, complacence, self-complacency]
Usage examples of "self-satisfaction".
Baptist zeal, Methodist self-satisfaction, Presbyterian Scots certainty about everything, Anglican social superiority, and a horde of evangelists and back-street messiahs to suit every taste, as well as an undertow of prohibitionists, anti-tobacco crusaders, and warriors against prostitution, who were linked with the churches though not actually a part of them, seemed to dominate the mores of the city.
She disappeared with the gangers for an hour or so, then came back grinning with self-satisfaction and bearing an armload of bags from the local Voodoo Chili franchise.
His compunctions cooled as the self-satisfaction of a near revenge crowded out the finer instincts that had for a moment asserted themselves--the good that he had inherited from the slave woman was once again submerged in the bad blood that had come down to him from his royal sire.
He was still in a marvelously good mood of self-satisfaction and had even unbent to make a few benign remarks to Mikkidu (which puzzled the latter mightily) and discourse safely by whimsical fits and starts with the wise, if somewhat taciturn, old Mingol.
While his self-satisfaction is incessantly ministered to on the one hand, on the other he insensibly imbibes the modes of feeling, and of looking at things, which belong to a more vulgar or a more limited mind than his own.
The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth.