emollience

plural emolliences

1. uncountableusuallyThe state or quality of being emollient; soothingness; softness.

   TB [Tony Blair] felt we had to combine emollience of tone with the clear drive and direction of continuing reform.

   2011, Alistair Campbell, Power & The People 1997-1999: The Alistair Campbell Diaries Volume 2, Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 528

   2 more examples

   The emollience of peach flesh, peach kernel oil, and creamy coconut milk, balanced with soothing chamomile and oat straw, makes this the perfect skin concoction.

   2010, Stephanie Rose Bird, The Big Book of Soul: The Ultimate Guide to the African American Spirit, Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., →ISBN

   His behavior was not implausibly assumed to reflect, albeit indirectly, larger elements at work, even if mitigated by the cosmopolitan, patrician emollience of his character, as against the awkward, provincial angularity of his untried successor, then Vice President, Harry Truman.

   2011, Jonathan Haslam, Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 34

2. uncountableusuallyThe act of soothing or appeasing; mollification.

   The party of William Sprigge and Robert Wood, the educational reformers, was not a force for emollience.

   2012, Blair Worden, God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 180

   2 more examples

   When it became clear to Josh that she thought he was a 'dipstick', she tried emollience: 'No, not at all. I just thought maybe you were going on too long. They were all too drunk or stupid to keep up.'

   2009, Justin Cartwright, To Heaven by Water, Bloomsbury, published 2010, →ISBN, pages 127–128

   The closing years of "Old Labour" in Britain were years laced with corruption, cynicism, emollience, and drift.

   2010, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir, Signal, published 2011, →ISBN, page 202