appease

verb: 1. to bring to a state of peace, quiet, ease, calm, or contentment; conciliate; soothe; to calm, pacify, or soothe, esp by acceding to the demands of. 2. to satisfy, allay, or relieve; to satisfy or quell (an appetite or thirst, etc); assuage; to cause to subside : allay. 3. to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of justice or other principles; to make concessions to (someone, such as an aggressor or a critic) often at the sacrifice of principles. Dictionary.com Examples: (1) to appease an angry king. // (2) The fruit appeased his hunger. // (3) appeased the dictator by accepting his demands; Placaters, who try hard to appease others so as to keep the peace, fear getting hurt in some way. --Mike Cote. // The more we appease, the more we indulge, the more emboldened the enemies of freedom become. —Ayaan Hirsi Ali, DAILY BEAST, "Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Our Duty Is to Keep Charlie Hebdo Alive," 8 Jan. 2015. // Or maybe Alibaba is doing what other companies are doing in China: gagging itself and its customers to appease the apparatchiks. —Brendon Hong, DAILY BEAST, "Alibaba’s Dark Side: Censoring Customers," 18 Nov. 2014. Merriam-Webster Examples: (1) appease a quarrel. // (2) appeased my hunger; trying to appease her guilty conscience. // But I imagine he and his siblings, who profited handsomely from the sale, have mixed emotions. They may be sad they had to sell, yet relieved that they are no longer under pressure to appease Wall Street's demand for growth and profits. —James Laube, Wine Spectator, 31 Mar. 2005. // The first is that, in affluent America, mothering has gone from an art to a cult, with devotees driving themselves to ever more baroque extremes to appease the goddess of perfect motherhood. —Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review, 20 Feb. 2005. // But from the start, senior officials inside the Justice Department viewed Huber’s task as unlikely to lead to anything of significance beyond appeasing those angry lawmakers and the president. —Matt Zapotosky, BostonGlobe.com, "Justice Department winds down Clinton-related inquiry once championed by Trump," 10 Jan. 2020. Related Words: mitigate, placate, assuage, lessen, soften, soothe, quell, calm, alleviate, mollify, allay, blunt, gratify, compose, subdue, do, quench, conciliate, ease, serve. Synonyms: assuage, calm, conciliate, disarm, gentle, mollify, pacify, placate, propitiate. Antonyms: anger, arouse, defy, enrage, incense, increase, inflame (also enflame), infuriate, ire, madden, outrage, sharpen. Synonym Study 1 (Dictionary.com): Appease, conciliate, propitiate imply trying to preserve or obtain peace. To appease is to make anxious overtures and often undue concessions to satisfy the demands of someone with a greed for power, territory, etc.: Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler at Munich. To conciliate is to win an enemy or opponent over by displaying a willingness to be just and fair: When mutual grievances are recognized, conciliation is possible. To propitiate is to admit a fault, and, by trying to make amends, to allay hostile feeling: to propitiate an offended neighbor. Synonym Study 2 (Merriam-Webster): Pacify, appease, placate, mollify, propitiate, conciliate mean to ease the anger or disturbance of. Pacify suggests a soothing or calming: pacified by a sincere apology. Appease implies quieting insistent demands by making concessions: appease their territorial ambitions. Placate suggests changing resentment or bitterness to goodwill: a move to placate local opposition. Mollify implies soothing hurt feelings or rising anger: a speech that mollified the demonstrators. Propitiate implies averting anger or malevolence especially of a superior being: propitiated his parents by dressing up. Conciliate suggests ending an estrangement by persuasion, concession, or settling of differences: conciliating the belligerent nations. Origin: 1300–50; Middle English apesen < Anglo-French apeser, Old French apais(i)er, equivalent to a- a-5 + paisi- peace + -er infinitive suffix. C16: from Old French apaisier, from pais peace, from Latin pax. —Dictionary.com. // First Known Use of appease: 14th century. History and Etymology: Middle English appesen, from Anglo-French apeser, apaiser, from a- (from Latin ad-) + pais peace — more at peace. —Merriam-Webster. // Added: 28 Jan. 2020 {12:10 PM} Sources: 1, 2.