Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Associated with or participating in a questionable act or a crime; having complicity: newspapers complicit with the propaganda arm of a dictatorship.
Wiktionary
- adj. Associated with or participating in an activity, especially one of a questionable nature.
Etymologies
- Back-formation from complicity, most likely, hence from French complicité, from complice ("partner, accomplice"), from Latin complex, complicem ("partner"). (Wiktionary)
- Back-formation from complicity. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Any evidence that Obama and the current FBI and CIA are under threat and must remain complicit in this murder?”
“Human rights lawyers and NGOs have expressed concern that the UK's intelligence agents could remain complicit in torture after consulting ministers, in line with the new guidance.”
The Guardian: New government guidance on torture breaches law
“This lie of the complacent and complicit is the latter.”
“How complicit is she in alienating Blondie from the family?”
“Just to survive in Libya, families have needed favours: to thrive could be called complicit, but it's not simple any more.”
“Four men, who formed a splinter group from the Klan, called the Cahaba Boys, were identified as complicit in the bombing .”
“Gardiner’s investigation revealed that the mainstream media not only failed to stand up to the government and insist on the truth, they all too often submitted in complicit cooperation with the government.”
“When people see how many decades you played this game taking their hard earned treasure; and in complicit roles with those who bankrupted and undermined the full faith and credit of the public’s treasury; and (more importantly) its good will in the social contract of government, we’ll see a reckoning the likes of which tars and feathers share no simile.”
“Ask yourself: How can a Congress that broke a 50-year record on fighting the President's agenda be called complicit?”
“Such differences would be easier to smooth over if the two leaders shared the kind of full trust that the French call complicité.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘complicit’.
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WF - list of EN back-formations
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations
aborigine, accrete, acculturate, admix, admixture, adolesce, adsorb, adulate, advect, aesthete, air-condition, anticline and 212 more...
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Words from poetry you write that you ...
See title
ireland, tattered, contents, silver, springs, waltz, spite, hammock, slackening, firmament, poesy, writ and 24 more...
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try to use now and then
exacerbate, inveterate, obviate, verbose, exasperate, disingenuous, squit, ingenue, Opiate, opioid, revile, decrepit and 14 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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Why We Curse: WTF?
This list collects the magnificent collection of vocabulary of the article "What the F***? Why We Curse," by Steven Pinker, in The New Republic (Oct. 2007). I think I'm more impressed with the coll...
curse, language, earthy, ancient, unthinkable, thinkable, emotional, rhyme, meter, alliteration, pleasure, metaphor and 196 more...
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Words from "Pearls Before Breakfast"
nondescript, shrewd, seed money, bureaucrat, indeterminate, fungible, cupidity, banal, grandeur, utilitarian, buffer, ecstatic and 123 more...
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newGRE
mostly from magoosh
imbue, verge on, nonchalant, deliberate, timorous, futile, provisional, dissect, checked, tinged, alluring, visionary and 1046 more...
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lanas's Words
serendipitous, insouciant, charming, sanguine, dear, odd, quaint, small, tremble, blush, flirt, tryst and 248 more...
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Vocab from High School
Words that I found in an old notebook.
affinity, aggrandizement, altruistic, ameliorate, apochryphal, aversion, blithe, bombastic, cajole, callous, capitulate, capricious and 178 more...
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tomax's Words
legerdemain, yayo, extravasation, wont, faze, coxswain, concomitant, enclave, unguent, rhabdomyolysis, effluent, puerile and 432 more...
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Magooosh
impugn, repudiate, sardonic, barnstorm, bemoan, unseemly, cornerstone, noisome, malodorous, retroactively, spuriously, spasmodically and 217 more...
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just words.
coquette, solecism, peripherally, recrudescence, viscid, turpitude, sententious, light-heeled, interminably, unflappable, palpably, solicitous and 215 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, C
cryptoxanthin, convent, calcar, chuckle, campanile, covet, complexion, campestral, chirography, counterscarp, caliginous, catabolism and 722 more...
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conglomeration
wherewithal, wan, zoonotic, zoonosis, nebulous, nefarious, nascent, quiescent, quell, undercroft, unwitting, unutterable and 658 more...
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PlayerWon's Words
perambulate, clandestine, morose, internecine, deracinate, promulgate, defenestrate, supine, perturb, staid, tumultuous, innocuous and 50 more...
Tweets
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