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Scoff   /skɔf/   Listen
noun
Scoff  n.  
1.
Derision; ridicule; mockery; derisive or mocking expression of scorn, contempt, or reproach. "With scoffs, and scorns, and contumelious taunts."
2.
An object of scorn, mockery, or derision. "The scoff of withered age and beardless youth."


verb
Scoff  v. t.  To treat or address with derision; to assail scornfully; to mock at. "To scoff religion is ridiculously proud and immodest."


Scoff  v. i.  (past & past part. scoffed; pres. part. scoffing)  To show insolent ridicule or mockery; to manifest contempt by derisive acts or language; often with at. "Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools who came to scoff, remained to pray." "God's better gift they scoff at and refuse."
Synonyms: To sneer; mock; gibe; jeer. See Sneer.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books



... was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... superiority. It cannot offend us, who have no right at all to be his match on his own ground. Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction in getting a fair chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions. The first person of our dual consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him. Then, when the other ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been inclined to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a celebrated ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... water off, Or folk be cutting weed, While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed. Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne'er a rise may see; For why, there are not any ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White


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