placate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin plācātus (“soothed, calm”), the past participle of plācō (“to calm, appease”),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} which is probably related to placeō (“to please”),^[2][8][4][7] the source of please.^[8][4] The American Heritage Dictionary refers it to Proto-Indo-European *plāk-.^[9] Etymonline allows that it may instead be a back-formation from placation,^[8] and Barnhart thinks this probable in some instances, alongside a development from the earlier adjective placate.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

To make a person less angry or hostile: 1678, in Cudworth's translation of Aratus in the True Intellectual System.^[2][3][7] Etymonline gives the 1670s,^[8] and Dictionary.com 1670–80.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The verb came after related words: placation, which Barnhart dates to 1589,^[7] placatory and placable,^[2] and the adjective placate, composed or placid, recorded in 1662, in Gurnall.^[2][7] Johnson (1755), glossing it "to appease; to reconcile", added that it was used in Scotland, and quoted Forbes on "a placated deity".^[10] Merriam-Webster's Unabridged now stresses soothing someone by making concessions.^[3]

Timeline

• 1662 – adjective, composed, placid (obsolete).^[2][7]
• 1678 – verb, to pacify or appease.^[2][3][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To calm someone's anger or hostility, often by making concessions; to appease or pacify: The airline offered vouchers to placate its stranded passengers.^[11][3][2]

Word family

• placater
• placatingly
• placation
• placative
• placatory

Related words

• implacable
• placid
• placable
• please
• placard

Usage notes

The verb is usually stressed on the second syllable in British English and on the first in American English.^[2] The first edition of the OED (1907) also gave the pronunciations /ˈpleɪkeɪt/ and /ˈplækeɪt/.^[2] The OED has a separate noun placate, /ˈplakɪt/, apparently a variant of placard: recorded from 1567 in Scots, used for an official announcement or edict by 1589 and for a piece of armour by 1632.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins