Other forms: complaints
A complaint is a statement that you are unhappy about something. Make a complaint, a formal complaint, the complaints procedure.
The verb is complain, and the prepositions differ between them: complain about something, complain to somebody, but a complaint about something and a complaint against a person. That against is the formal one, used when somebody is being accused. There is a second, older sense meaning an illness — a stomach complaint, a chest complaint — which is slightly dated and still turns up in medical and historical writing.
1nouncomplaintA statement that you are unhappy with something.
“There have been three complaints about the noise.”
2nounaccusationA formal accusation against somebody.
“A complaint was made against two officers.”
3nounillnessAn illness, in older use.
“He had a chest complaint all that winter.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction.
Latin plangere meant to beat the breast in grief, and complangere was to do it together — public mourning. A complaint began as lamentation, and the modern sense of an official grievance is what happens when the grief is filed in writing.
Latin
planctus
Old French
compleindre
Anglo-Norman
compleint
Middle English
compleynte
English, today
complaint
From Middle English compleynte, from Anglo-Norman compleint, from Old French compleindre, eventually from Latin planctus (whence plaint).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA