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CONTEMPTIBLE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Deserving of contempt or scorn
Classified under:
Similar:
abject; low; low-down; miserable; scummy; scurvy (of the most contemptible kind)
bastardly; mean (of no value or worth)
pathetic; pitiable; pitiful (inspiring mixed contempt and pity)
Also:
ignoble (completely lacking nobility in character or quality or purpose)
unworthy (lacking in value or merit)
Antonym:
estimable (deserving of respect or high regard)
Derivation:
contemptibility (unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values)
Context examples:
I conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
This writer went through all the usual topics of European moralists, showing how diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet, says he, I dare engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray!
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
And yet I have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in England since my return; where a little contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
