See satisficing on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "See satisfice.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "verb form"
},
"expansion": "satisficing",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"form_of": [
{
"word": "satisfice"
}
],
"glosses": [
"present participle and gerund of satisfice"
],
"id": "en-satisficing-en-verb-vFH-RLI~",
"links": [
[
"satisfice",
"satisfice#English"
]
],
"tags": [
"form-of",
"gerund",
"participle",
"present"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"satisficing"
],
"word": "satisficing"
}
{
"etymology_text": "See satisfice.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "-"
},
"expansion": "satisficing (not comparable)",
"name": "en-adj"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "85 3 13",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "84 0 16",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English links with manual fragments",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "83 0 17",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "91 0 9",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1956, H. A. Simon, “Rational choice and the structure of the environment”, in Psychological Review, volume 63, number 2, page 136:",
"text": "A ‘satisficing’ path, a path that will permit satisfaction at some specified level of all its needs.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Both satisfying and sufficient."
],
"id": "en-satisficing-en-adj-wA9IO0fv",
"links": [
[
"satisfying",
"satisfying"
],
[
"sufficient",
"sufficient"
]
],
"tags": [
"not-comparable"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"satisficing"
],
"word": "satisficing"
}
{
"etymology_text": "See satisfice.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "-"
},
"expansion": "satisficing (uncountable)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [],
"coordinate_terms": [
{
"word": "settling"
},
{
"word": "optimizing"
},
{
"word": "maximizing"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
866,
877
]
],
"ref": "2026 May 26, David Epstein, “The Real Meaning of \"The Road Not Taken\". It's not about rugged individualism”, in Range Widely [Substack newsletter]:",
"text": "The end of the poem [\"The Road Not Taken\" by Robert Frost] does not actually depict the narrator looking back at a bold decision with pride. Rather, the narrator is projecting to a future in which they will tell the story of this choice as if it mattered, when really it made no difference. The poem is about agonizing over meaningless decisions. Frost wrote it for a friend of his, Edward Thomas, who dithered over which path to take when they went on walks together, and then would later regret that they hadn’t gone a different way. Thomas was falling prey to Fredkin’s paradox: the more similar our options, the less choosing between them matters, but the harder choosing between them is. Thus, we’re liable to spend the most energy on the least important decisions. Frost's poem dovetails with the work of the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, who coined the term \"satisficing\" — a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice — to describe how, in real decision making, we can't actually optimize. We are not equipped to accurately evaluate all our options. We must settle for good enough. And, Simon, thought, we should be eager to settle for good enough. Simon referred to himself as an ‘incorrigible satisficer.’",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The act or process of satisficing."
],
"id": "en-satisficing-en-noun-HzujvVOi",
"links": [
[
"satisficing",
"satisfice#Verb"
]
],
"tags": [
"uncountable"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"satisficing"
],
"word": "satisficing"
}
{
"categories": [
"English adjectives",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English links with manual fragments",
"English non-lemma forms",
"English nouns",
"English uncomparable adjectives",
"English uncountable nouns",
"English verb forms",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"etymology_text": "See satisfice.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "verb form"
},
"expansion": "satisficing",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"form_of": [
{
"word": "satisfice"
}
],
"glosses": [
"present participle and gerund of satisfice"
],
"links": [
[
"satisfice",
"satisfice#English"
]
],
"tags": [
"form-of",
"gerund",
"participle",
"present"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"satisficing"
],
"word": "satisficing"
}
{
"categories": [
"English adjectives",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English links with manual fragments",
"English non-lemma forms",
"English nouns",
"English uncomparable adjectives",
"English uncountable nouns",
"English verb forms",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"etymology_text": "See satisfice.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "-"
},
"expansion": "satisficing (not comparable)",
"name": "en-adj"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1956, H. A. Simon, “Rational choice and the structure of the environment”, in Psychological Review, volume 63, number 2, page 136:",
"text": "A ‘satisficing’ path, a path that will permit satisfaction at some specified level of all its needs.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Both satisfying and sufficient."
],
"links": [
[
"satisfying",
"satisfying"
],
[
"sufficient",
"sufficient"
]
],
"tags": [
"not-comparable"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"satisficing"
],
"word": "satisficing"
}
{
"categories": [
"English adjectives",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English links with manual fragments",
"English non-lemma forms",
"English nouns",
"English uncomparable adjectives",
"English uncountable nouns",
"English verb forms",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"etymology_text": "See satisfice.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "-"
},
"expansion": "satisficing (uncountable)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"coordinate_terms": [
{
"word": "settling"
},
{
"word": "optimizing"
},
{
"word": "maximizing"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
866,
877
]
],
"ref": "2026 May 26, David Epstein, “The Real Meaning of \"The Road Not Taken\". It's not about rugged individualism”, in Range Widely [Substack newsletter]:",
"text": "The end of the poem [\"The Road Not Taken\" by Robert Frost] does not actually depict the narrator looking back at a bold decision with pride. Rather, the narrator is projecting to a future in which they will tell the story of this choice as if it mattered, when really it made no difference. The poem is about agonizing over meaningless decisions. Frost wrote it for a friend of his, Edward Thomas, who dithered over which path to take when they went on walks together, and then would later regret that they hadn’t gone a different way. Thomas was falling prey to Fredkin’s paradox: the more similar our options, the less choosing between them matters, but the harder choosing between them is. Thus, we’re liable to spend the most energy on the least important decisions. Frost's poem dovetails with the work of the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, who coined the term \"satisficing\" — a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice — to describe how, in real decision making, we can't actually optimize. We are not equipped to accurately evaluate all our options. We must settle for good enough. And, Simon, thought, we should be eager to settle for good enough. Simon referred to himself as an ‘incorrigible satisficer.’",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The act or process of satisficing."
],
"links": [
[
"satisficing",
"satisfice#Verb"
]
],
"tags": [
"uncountable"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"satisficing"
],
"word": "satisficing"
}
Download raw JSONL data for satisficing meaning in All languages combined (4.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-08-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-08-05 using wiktextract (872fc7b and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.