comply
Formscomplies, complying, complied
- 1To yield assent to a request, rule, or demand; to agree, consent, or adapt oneself so as to conform.
The company complied with the court order within thirty days.
Residents who refuse to comply with the evacuation notice face fines.
Similaragree, consent, accede, concede, yield
Oppositeviolate
Note
The everyday sense, and the one built with with: you comply with a demand, an order, a rule. Defoe writes 'comply with these most reasonable Demands' in 1719. Samuel Butler's Hudibras adds a warning that still holds: 'He that complies against his Will / Is of his own opinion still.' Complying is outward conformity, not a change of mind. Its natural opposite is violate: one complies with a rule or violates it.
- 2To accomplish or fulfill something, such as a duty, promise, or set of conditions.
The knight vowed to comply the oath he had sworn at court.
Within a year she had complied every condition of her father's will.
Note
The meaning closest to the word's roots. Latin complēre, 'to finish, complete', passed into Italian complire and Spanish cumplir, both meaning 'to fulfil'. Here comply takes its object directly, with no with. Henry Glapthorne writes in 1654, 'my power cannot comply my promise.' Modern English would say fulfill or carry out. That bare transitive construction is what marks the sense as archaic today.
- 3To behave with ceremonious courtesy; to offer polite compliments and formal attentions.
The courtiers complied and bowed as the duchess passed through the hall.
Every gentleman at court was expected to comply to each lady before the dance began.
Note
A courtier's sense, best known from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The prince offers his hand with 'let me comply with you in this garb,' calling such welcome 'fashion and ceremonie'. The with here is not the with of obeying a rule. It means behaving courteously toward someone, not submitting to them. A modern reader meeting the line should hear politeness, not obedience.
Less common meaning
- 4To enfold something in one's arms or wrap it close to oneself; to embrace.
She complied the letter to her breast and wept.
And then a rug of carded wooll, / Which, spunge-like, drinking in the dull / Light of the moon, seem'd to comply, / Cloud-like, the daintie deitie.
1648, Robert Herrick, “Oberon’s Palace”Note
A poet's sense, and a physical one. In Robert Herrick's Oberon's Palace (1648), a rug of carded wool, drinking in the moonlight, seems 'to comply, / Cloud-like, the daintie deitie': to wrap around the god like a cloud. Like the 'fulfil' sense, it takes a direct object with no with. That construction is the clue that the line means enfolding, not consenting.
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Origin
'Comply' comes from Italian 'complire', Catalan 'complir' and Spanish 'cumplir' (to complete or fulfill), or perhaps from Old French 'compli', all going back to Latin 'complēre' from 'compleō' (to finish, complete, or fulfill). This was formed from 'com-', a prefix indicating completeness, plus 'pleō' (to fill), and it is related to English 'complete' and 'compliment'.