to obey rules or do what others want
- When the President is popular, the legislature tends to be compliant.
- Still, to be too compliant may arouse suspicion as well.Suzanne Collins -- Mockingjay
- They get a ready supply of compliant low-cost workers.Sonia Nazario -- Enrique’s Journey
- ...they were more compliant than American workers, less likely to file workers’ compensation claims or to support union organizing drives.Warren St. John -- Outcasts United
- He realized that his mother wasn’t the compliant woman he had known before.Robert Cormier -- I Am the Cheese
- Washington, with the help of a generally compliant mainstream American press, was busily denouncing Aristide, even manufacturing lies about him,Tracy Kidder -- Mountains Beyond Mountains
- She had always been the docile middle child, used to following the lead. Next to an alto she sang alto, by a soprano, soprano. Miss Sonrisa, cheerful, compliant. Her life had gotten bound up with a domineering man, and so she shrank from the challenge her sisters were giving her.Julia Alvarez -- In the Time of the Butterflies
- Unlike her compliant older brother, Sonia, seven months old, refuses all the food.Jhumpa Lahiri -- The Namesake
- children compliant with the parental will
- Compliant as she was in general, there were two instances, among others, in which her resolution to take her own way was not to be overcome.Collins, Wilkie -- My Lady’s Money
- In penitential tenderness, he took her hand, and, to his awe and trouble, it remained in his, compliant.Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Tales and Fantasies
- With this reply, the compliant housekeeper—as amiable as ever on the surface—returned to her chair.Collins, Wilkie -- I Say No
- Tom’s always very compliant to me; I don’t think he’s so obstinate.Eliot, George -- The Mill on the Floss
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To see samples using other meanings of compliant, click a word sense below:
as in: compliant with the law Define
conforming to rules
as in: a compliant individual
Define
to obey rules or do what others want
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