| Library / English Dictionary |
CONTEMPTUOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Expressing extreme contempt
Synonyms:
contemptuous; disdainful; insulting; scornful
Classified under:
Similar:
disrespectful (exhibiting lack of respect; rude and discourteous)
Derivation:
contempt (a manner that is generally disrespectful and contemptuous)
contempt (open disrespect for a person or thing)
contempt (lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike)
contemptuousness (the manifestation of scorn and contempt)
Context examples:
When they had nothing else to say, it must be always easy to begin abusing Miss Woodhouse; and the enmity which they dared not shew in open disrespect to her, found a broader vent in contemptuous treatment of Harriet.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
“Ba—a—ah!” said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous interjection.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
His reply was simply contemptuous, given in a pause in which he turned his eyes from Mrs. Harker to me, instantly turning them back again:—What an asinine question!
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of;—and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty—which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much—I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
"To cook by your fire and to sleep under your roof for the night," I had announced on entering old Ebbits's cabin; and he had looked at me blear- eyed and vacuous, while Zilla had favored me with a sour face and a contemptuous grunt.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
Whoo! He blew a slight, contemptuous breath, as if he blew himself away.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Here, she said, stretching out her hand with her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, is a worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief in a house where she wouldn't have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of anger, and repining, and reproach.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all this, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it, let me laugh as I may.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
