Contempt meaning

Noun: contempt

Pronunciation: (kun’tem(p)t)

Contempt meaning:

• Lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike
• A manner that is generally disrespectful and contemptuous
• Open disrespect for a person or thing
• (law) a wilful disobedience to or disrespect for the authority of a court or legislative body

Synonyms: disdain, scorn, disrespect, opprobrium

Quotations: W. E. B. Du Bois – It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

William Osler – By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy – indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from contempt bred of self satisfaction.

Herbert Spencer – There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Edward Young – In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom but he who reflects not, never reaps has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.

Lord Chesterfield – For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.

William Hazlitt – Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He, who has contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

Sample sentences:

1. There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.
2. That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.
3. Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.
4. No other profession is subject to the public contempt and derision that sometimes befalls lawyers. The bitter fruit of public incomprehension of the law itself and its dynamics.
5. Comedy is defiance. It’s a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it’s the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale.
6. True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt and its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
7. There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.
8. There is an insolence which none but those who themselves deserve contempt can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.
9. I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.
10. Don’t hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.
11. As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
12. I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
13. Practice the vocabulary of love and unlearn the language of hate and contempt.
14. For those who would joyously march in rank and file, they have already earned my contempt, for they were given a large brain by accident when a spinal cord would have sufficed.
15. If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.