- despise
- despise, contemn, scorn, disdain, scout mean to regard a person or thing as beneath one's notice or as unworthy of one's attention or interest. The same differences in implications and connotations are observable in the corresponding nouns despite, contempt, scorn, disdain when they denote such an attitude toward or such treatment of a person or thing.Despise and despite may imply an emotional reaction from strong disfavor to loathing, but in precise use it stresses a looking down upon a thing and its evaluation as mean, petty, weak, or worthless{
he must learn, however, to despise petty adversaries. No good sportsman ought to shoot at crows— Scott
}{bird and beast despised my snares, which took me so many waking hours at night to invent— Hudson
}{Receive thy friend, who, scorning flight, goes to meet danger with despite— Longfellow
}{the despite in which cunners are held is a convention— Yale Review
}Contemn and contempt imply even a harsher judgment than despise or despite, for despise and despite may connote mere derision, whereas contemn and especially contempt usually suggest vehement, though not necessarily vocal, condemnation of the person or thing as low, vile, feeble, or ignominious{I contemn their low images of love— Steele
}{his own early drawings of moss roses and picturesque castles —things that he now mercilessly contemned— Bennett
}{and in contempt of hell and heaven, dies rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings— Masejield
}{it was to proclaim their utter contempt for the public and popular conceptions of art, that the Dadaists launched into a series of outrageous practical jokes— Day Lewis
}Scorn implies quick, indignant, or profound contempt{instructed from her early years to scorn the art of female tears— Swift
}{I knew he'd scorn me. He hates frumps— Meredith
}{Voltaire, with his quick intellectual scorn and eager malice of the brain— Dowden
}{common sense, rejecting with scorn all that can be called mysticism— Inge
}Disdain suggests a visible manifestation of pride and arrogance or of aversion to what is base{a great mind disdains to hold anything by courtesy— Johnson
}{the psychiatric patient is disdained and ridiculed by his fellow inmates— Banay
}{his disdain of affectation and prudery was magnificent— Mencken
}Scout stresses not only derision but a refusal to consider the person or thing concerned as of any value, efficacy, or truth. It therefore suggests rejection or dismissal{many great philosophers have not only been scouted while they were living, but forgotten as soon as they were dead— Hazlitt
}{Alice would have scouted . . . any suggestion that her parent was more selfish than saintly— Shaw
}Antonyms: appreciateContrasted words: admire, esteem, respect (see under REGARD n): value, prize, cherish, treasure (see APPRECIATE)
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
