Appease

How to spell appease

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce appease

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does appease mean?

1. verbTo calm or satisfy someone, often by giving in to their demands.

Appease in a sentence

• The manager raised the discount to appease the angry customer.

• A quick snack will appease the children until dinner is ready.

Where does appease come from?

Language of origin: French

Appease comes from the Old French verb apaisier, meaning 'to pacify' or 'to bring to peace', which was built from the prefix a- ('to') and pais, the Old French word for 'peace'. That pais traces back to the Latin pax (stem pac-), meaning 'peace', the very same root that gives us 'pacify' and 'pact'. English adopted the word in the early 1300s, during the Middle English period, originally with the sense of reconciling people or quieting a quarrel. Over time it broadened to cover satisfying an appetite or a craving, as in appeasing hunger, and later took on its modern political flavour of yielding to an aggressor to keep the peace. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the single 'p' is doubled because of the old prefix, and the 'peace'-like ending is spelled '-pease', not '-peace', which catches many writers out.

How the word is built

• ap- (variant of ad-, meaning 'to')
• -pease (from Old French pais 'peace', from Latin pax)