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Contemptuous   Listen
adjective
Contemptuous  adj.  Manifesting or expressing contempt or disdain; scornful; haughty; insolent; disdainful. "A proud, contemptuous behavior." "Savage invective and contemptuous sarcasm." "Rome... entertained the most contemptuous opinion of the Jews."
Synonyms: Scornful; insolent; haughty; disdainful; supercilious; insulting; contumelious. Contemptuous, Contemptible. These words, from their similarity of sound, are sometimes erroneously interchanged, as when a person speaks of having "a very contemptible opinion of another." Contemptible is applied to that which is the object of contempt; as, contemptible conduct; acontemptible fellow. Contemptuous is applied to that which indicates contempt; as, a contemptuous look; a contemptuous remark; contemptuous treatment. A person, or whatever is personal, as an action, an expression, a feeling, an opinion, may be either contemptuous or contemptible; a thing may be contemptible, but can not be contemptuous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contemptuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... means they sought to accomplish this end by a new mode from which more might be expected. On every occasion they and their adherents openly showed the contempt which they felt for him, and contrived to throw ridicule on everything he undertook. By this contemptuous treatment they hoped to harass the haughty spirit of the priest, and to obtain through his mortified self-love what they had failed in by other means. In this, indeed, they did not succeed; but the expedient on which they had fallen led ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... their seats, among them Orde. When, however, the latter had turned to indicate to one of the women the vacated seat, he discovered it occupied by a chubby and flashily dressed youth of the sort common enough in the vicinity of Fourteenth Street; impudent of eye, cynical of demeanour, and slightly contemptuous of everything unaccustomed. He had slipped in back of Orde when that young man arose, whether under the impression that Orde was about to get off the car or from sheer impudence, it would ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... her thoughts have been, and even she hesitated a moment ere she could bring herself to such an act. Then with a contemptuous—"Pshaw!" she arose and opening her jewel box took from a private drawer a plain gold ring, bearing date nine years back, and having inscribed upon it simply her name "Marie." This she brought to Rosamond, saying, "I can't wear it now;—my hands are too thin and bony, ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes

... her blue eyes. He grunted and laid a hand on her arm midway between the shoulder and elbow. With his other hand he lifted her forearm and doubled it back. Disgust and wonder showed in his face, and he dropped her arm with a contemptuous grunt. Then he muttered a few guttural syllables, turned his back upon her, and addressed himself ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... in the young man's attitude as he faced him, level eyed, hands between his knees, a contemptuous smile on his hard young face, smote him ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... and when those Western women do become perverts to New York's gospel of snobbishness, they are the worst snobs in the push. Langdon, regardless of my presence, looked after her with a faintly amused, faintly contemptuous expression that—well, it didn't fit in with my notion of what constitutes a gentleman. In fact, I didn't know which of them had come off the worse in that brief encounter in my presence. It was my first glimpse of a fashionable behind-the-scenes, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... while those of the true faith were starving, why the heretics were clean while the others were dirty. He at last said that the British Government subsidised all Soupers out of the secret service money, and making a contemptuous grimace, to express his opinion of such miscreants, curled up his hand and passed it behind his back, thus dramatically indicating the underhand way in which the money is conveyed to the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... on the 17th of last month, of the Chinese school, established by Dr. Pond; the other the reception, on the 3d instant, of six Chinese brethren to church membership. To appreciate the significance of these scenes, one must remember how contemptuous is the prejudice which prevails on this coast against these ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 5, May, 1889 • Various

... us, to make the necessary arrangements for staying with my father, whose illness appeared to have lost suddenly its worst symptoms. As soon as she was gone he regarded me with a look half angry, half contemptuous. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... repetition. It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is something much more than—unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere as it is careful here—he expected from Romance in the commoner and half-contemptuous acceptation of that word. Lancelot he may, though he should not, still class as a mere amoureux transi—a nobler and pluckier Silvius in an earlier As Yon Like It, and with a greater than Phoebe ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... with a contemptuous toss of the head, "I shedn't think they did. We niver tuk to them long sticks; 'bout as much use as bean-poles. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... mentioning that the ruler of the British Empire was a woman, but this admission dropped from me accidentally one day, and then—what a falling off was there! I instantly recognised the mistake I had made from the contemptuous glances of my blacks. And although I hastened to say that she was a mighty chieftainess, upon whose dominions the sun never set; and that she was actually the direct ruler of the blacks themselves, they repudiated her with scorn, and contemned ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... of an invisible finger upon our lips when we would speak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we grow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the spirit has ceased from its labors, that the high-built beauty of the spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple in the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... said she, in her most contemptuous tone, "that you engage to do my will only on certain conditions; and that you are taking advantage of my necessities in order to drive ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... execrate the memory of Semiramis, for the cruel art which she invented, of frustrating the purposes of nature, and of blasting in the bud the hopes of future generations. In the exercise of domestic jurisdiction, the nobles of Rome express an exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of the human species. When they have called for warm water, if a slave has been tardy in his obedience, he is instantly chastised with three hundred lashes: but should the same slave commit ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... with every passing day. He was a brooding, ingrown man, secretive and sullen, with a streak of wildness which he usually managed to control. He went for the madman like a gigantic terrier pup, shaggy and ferocious and contemptuous ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long

... Rowley poems were written by a boy, and that such lovely things as the Dirge in AElla suggest a maturity that Chatterton did not by any means perfectly possess. In some respects he was as childish (to use the word in no contemptuous sense) as in others he was precocious. And it is a thousand pities that the difficulties of Chatterton's language and the peculiar charm and invention of his metrical technique cannot be appreciated till the boyish love of adventure, delight in ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... remained. The contemptuous antipathy with which she received Barbicane's proposition is known. The English have but a single mind in their 25,000,000 of bodies which Great Britain contains. They gave it to be understood that the enterprise of the Gun Club was contrary ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... Dolly loved her mother. At best, she had felt towards her that contemptuous toleration which inferior minds often extend to higher ones. And ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... this time the card-tables had claimed their complement of players, who returned to the accustomed groove to find amusement there which poetry had not afforded them. They felt besides that the revenge of so many outraged vanities would be incomplete unless it were followed up by contemptuous indifference; so they showed their tacit disdain for the native product by leaving Lucien and Mme. de Bargeton to themselves. Every one appeared to be absorbed in his own affairs; one chattered ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... fire, sensibility, and volume of his own nature, that is all that he has learned to recognise. The tumultuary and gray tide of life, the empire of routine, the unrejoicing faces of his elders, fill him with contemptuous surprise; there also he seems to walk among the tombs of spirits; and it is only in the course of years, and after much rubbing with his fellow-men, that he begins by glimpses to see himself from without and his fellows from within: ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... majesty must get some bits for these, To bridle their contemptuous cursing tongues, That, like unruly never-broken jades, Break through the hedges of their hateful mouths, And ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... had in the gardener they saw yesterday, and put him in the butler's room, and the four men made hideous rows as before. He was grateful and respectful, but contemptuous. They ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... time to keep one's feet!—apart from the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country-churchyard. To this day, however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes of English society ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... signify that it could not hear. Then he pointed to its mouth, and in the same way tried to explain that it could not eat the meat placed before it. Then he touched its head, to show that it could not understand. We fancied that the chief comprehended his meaning, for he laughed, and cast a contemptuous look at the ugly block. Although he did this, however, in our presence, it is possible that he still had some superstitious fear of the idol, or of the evil spirit it might have ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... Let it cool till it's thick thick are far more common, especially in the speech of women and children, than our linguistic text-books would lead one to suppose. In a class by themselves are the really enormous number of words, many of them sound-imitative or contemptuous in psychological tone, that consist of duplications with either change of the vowel or change of the initial consonant—words of the type sing-song, riff-raff, wishy-washy, harum-skarum, roly-poly. Words of this type are all but universal. Such examples as the Russian ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... in the world—and an evil spirit it is—which through all ages has instigated the rich to look down with contemptuous feelings of superiority on the humble occupations and inferior circumstances of the poor. Now, that this spirit is diametrically opposed to the benevolent precepts of Christianity, the fact of our blessed ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the legendary stories related of Democritus, as that he put out his eyes with a burning-glass that he might no longer be deluded with their false indications, and more tranquilly exercise his reason—a fiction bearing upon its face the contemptuous accusation of his antagonists, but, by the stolidity of subsequent ages, received as an actual fact instead of a sarcasm. As to his habit of so constantly deriding the knowledge and follies of men that he universally acquired the epithet ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... from long habit, looked upon her as a failure, an altogether insignificant being. They treated her with careless familiarity which concealed a sort of contemptuous kindness. She called herself Lise, and seemed embarrassed at this frivolous youthful name. When they saw that she probably would not marry, they changed it from Lise to Lison, and since Jeanne's birth, she had become "Aunt Lison," a poor relation, very neat, frightfully ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... have left them an appearance of liberty so excessive that they have not intervened in their disputes or even punished their crimes. They have allowed them to refuse with insolence certain moderate rents payable in grain and lawfully due. They have passed over in silence the contemptuous refusal of the Acadians to take titles from them for the new lands which ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... very serious in the shifting half-lights that entered the carriage as they passed the street lamps, "I don't feel altogether comfortable about this business. If your friend had not irritated me by the contemptuous manner in which he treated my doubt of his endurance—a purely physical quality—and by the cool incivility of his suggestion that the corpse be that of a physician, I should not have gone on with it. If anything should happen we are ruined, as I ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... You may be disappointed to learn from these telltale documents—translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne—that the Russian writer while in exile avoided his fellow convicts, was very unpopular with them, and that throughout his correspondence there are numerous contemptuous references to socialism and "going to the people." He preferred solitude, he asserts more than once, to the company of common folk or mediocre persons. He gives Tolstoy at his true rating, but is cruel to Turgenieff—who never wished him harm. The Dostoievsky caricature ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... no reply except a cool, contemptuous laugh, which stung the excited young man to double fury. He sprang upon the lawyer, and clutch'd him by ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... daresay the projection in Abronia and Mirabilis may be an absorbent organ. It was very good fun bothering the seeds of Cucurbita by planting them edgeways, as would never naturally occur, and then the peg could not act properly. Many of the Germans are very contemptuous about making out use of organs; but they may sneer the souls out of their bodies, and I for one shall think it the most interesting part of natural history. Indeed, you are greatly mistaken if you doubt for one moment on the very great value of your constant and most kind ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... toga picta of a triumphator, which Pompey, by special law, was authorized to wear at the games. Cicero uses the contemptuous diminutive, togula.] ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... at least two earlier loves; for once she would be a first love; felt at moments that with this one passion once indulged, it might be happiness thereafter to remain chaste for ever. And then, by accident, yet surely reading indifference in his manner of accepting her gifts, she is ready again for contemptuous, open battle. Is he indeed but a child still, this nursling of the forbidding Amazon, of that Amazonian goddess—to be a child always? or a wily priest rather, skilfully circumventing her sorceries, with mystic ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... pinch, so that by the time the cards were dealt he had decorated both nostrils and replaced the princess in his waistcoat pocket,—always on his left side. A gentleman of the "good" century (in distinction from the "grand" century) could alone have invented that compromise between contemptuous silence and a sarcasm which might not have been understood. He accepted poor players and knew how to make the best of them. His delightful equability of ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... the store elicited the information that the Bishop had gone up the river to Binchinnin, Ostachegan Creek and Fort St. Pierre. Next, the name of Herbert Mabyn called forth contemptuous shrugs. None of the men could give certain information of his whereabouts, though Clearwater Lake was mentioned again. He had not been in to the post for four months; and there was a handful of letters waiting for him. Garth was referred to the breeds across the river for ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... and forth in front of his chair in a way that was almost man-like; but her contemptuous impatience made her dangerously beautiful. Suddenly she stopped and turned upon him, and there were ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... old Eastern legend to the effect that, once upon a time, ostriches, in addition to being the largest and strongest birds on the face of the earth, were also the proudest, the most contemptuous, and the most egregiously conceited birds ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... he claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness, and the next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine thrill. I found him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly and trying to appear unconscious of the glances—amused, contemptuous, hostile—that were turned toward him. He would have passed me without speaking, but I took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed quarantine and a convoy of tugs were butting us into ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... period a Warrington would confess that he was a contributor to the leading journals of the day. The members were on the look-out for any indications of intellectual originality, academical or otherwise, and specially contemptuous of humbug, cant, and the qualities of the 'windbag' in general. To be elected, therefore, was virtually to receive a certificate from some of your cleverest contemporaries that they regarded you as likely to be in future an eminent man. The judgment so passed was perhaps as significant ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... how his heart had warmed and quickened at the sight of it, how eagerly he had read it—and now a viper coiled upon the white table-cloth would hardly have given him a greater shock. Contradictory, incalculable, whimsical life! A year ago how scornfully he would have laughed, what contemptuous unbelief would have filled his soul, if he had been told that any letter of hers could have struck him cold with the vague apprehension of coming misfortune. He tore off the envelope and threw it into the fire. But before he could glance at the letter there was ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... dozen questions to the prisoner with evident slowness and an attempt to speak each word distinctly, but nothing came of this. And with a contemptuous grunt he ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... passed, and he had obtained no clue to the mystery, which increased his anxiety, and made him more fretful and testy than usual. He allowed no opportunity to escape, to make May feel his displeasure. Bitter and contemptuous speeches, coarse allusions to her religion, fault-finding with all she did, and sudden outbursts of unprovoked fury, were now the daily trials of her life. Trials which were sore temptations, and full of humiliation to a proud, high spirit, like May's; and sharp were the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... saloon-keepers, who never ceased to watch him while he was in their places, who were jealous of every moment he lingered after he had paid his money; the hurrying throngs upon the streets, who were deaf to his entreaties, oblivious of his very existence—and savage and contemptuous when he forced himself upon them. They had their own affairs, and there was no place for him among them. There was no place for him anywhere—every direction he turned his gaze, this fact was forced ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the people like is pooh-poohed; whatever is popular is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... that time was not only suspicious of everyone's patriotism but a deadly foe of golf. He even went so far as to call it Scotch croquet and other contemptuous names. I saw him watching the clubs and the paper and speculating on the age of the man, whose legs were, I admit, noticeably young, and he drew my attention to him too—by nudges and whispers. Obviously this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various

... contemptuous young man you have already told me so much of. How have they brought you down ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... and you prepare for yourself, later on, a harvest of ingratitude. How dangerous it is to accustom your sons and daughters to a style of living beyond your means and theirs! In the first place, it is very bad for your purse; in the second place it develops a contemptuous spirit in the very bosom of the family. If you dress your children like little lords, and give them to understand that they are superior to you, is it astonishing if they end by disdaining you? You will have nourished at your table the declassed—a product ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... this first eagerness wore off, and by the time she returned from the tea interval—during which her place had been taken by the girl who acted as "supply"—she had already begun to show faint beginnings of the slightly contemptuous, detached air of the official. She was pleasant still, but as a favour, and with the whole power of the Thorhaven Council at her back "Three in family, I think? I suppose you take one for Mildred?" And she expected Mrs. Creddle's neighbour to feel a little flattered by her remembering ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... was physically defenceless and at the mercy of twelve armed and lawless men. But he retained a preternatural clearness of perception, and audacity born of unqualified scorn for his antagonists, with a feminine sharpness of tongue. In a voice which astonished even himself by its contemptuous distinctness, he said: "My name IS Ford, but as I only SUPPOSE your name is Harrison perhaps you'll be fair enough to take that rag from your face and show it ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... not refuse to pay, sire. It must be the truth, as the queen permits it to be said." And a second look, still more contemptuous than the ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... who would pause amidst the rush of the armed battalions to listen to him? How could the calm voice of Science make itself heard among the clash and clangour of war? The German Emperor had already laughed in his face, and accepted his challenge with contemptuous incredulity. No doubt his staff and all his officers would do the same. What possibility then would there be to convince the millions who were fighting blindly under their orders? No; it was hopeless. The war must go on. He could only hope that the Aerial Fleet which Mr Parmenter was bringing ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... smiling cowboy did not move. For a moment as he regarded the stranger his shoulders shook with silent, contemptuous laughter; then his face became grave, and he looked a little ashamed. The minutes passed, and still he sat ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... a very dirty under shirt - brought him back between them like a reluctant maid, and, thrust him into a place between Faauma and Elena, where he was petted and ministered to. When his turn came in the kava drinking - and you may be sure, in their contemptuous, affectionate kindness for him, as for a good dog, it came rather earlier than it ought - he was cried under a new name. ALEKI is what they make of his own name ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... meanwhile French officers and men passed the gates in little bands of fifteen or so at a time, and were seen roving about the town unarmed, jaunty, and gallant, bearing pieces of chalk in their hands to mark the houses on which their troops were to be billeted. While affecting an air of contemptuous indifference, they were unable to hide their amazement at the sight of so many splendid buildings, and at every turn were confounded by the novel scenes presented to their gaze. But what struck them most of all was the grim severity of the palaces, which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... See especially the campaign bulletins for 1807, so insulting to the king and queen of Prussia, but, owing to that fact, so well calculated to excite the contemptuous laughter and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... character, that will linger pleasantly in my memory. He was a little man with a great personality, or rather I will say a great purpose, and that was to approve himself in the eyes of the wife whom he worshipped, and her perplexed, slightly contemptuous family. The trouble was that Tasker was in the beginning a hack journalist, socially and personally impossible; and that Viola Thesiger, whom he married, belonged by birth to the rigidest circle of Cathedral ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various

... me?" answered Hebron, with a contemptuous grimace. "I care for thee only! Of thee only am I thinking, I ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... psalms, reading, and the word of God." Yet these things are no excuse, and he proves this, as regards each in particular. For in the first place, as to prayer, he says: "One prayer of the obedient man is sooner granted than ten thousand prayers of the contemptuous": meaning that those are contemptuous and unworthy to be heard who work not with their hands. Secondly, as to the divine praises he adds: "Even while working with their hands they can easily sing hymns to God." Thirdly, with regard to reading, he goes on to say: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... indignation she no sooner saw me than she burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, and was heartless enough to declare that I looked "a perfect fright." Thoroughly disgusted with such unsisterly conduct I mustered all my dignity, and without condescending to ask for an explanation walked in contemptuous silence out of ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... no property! we have no wives! we have no children! we have no city! no country! But we have a Father in heaven, and we are determined, as far as his grace shall enable us, and as far as our degraded condition and contemptuous life will admit, to keep all his commandments; especially will we be obedient to our masters, so long as God, in his, sovereign providence, shall suffer us to be ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... lozenless, the doors burned out or hanging off their hinges. Before the better houses were piles of goods and gear turned out on the causeway. They had been turned about by pike-handles and trodden upon with contemptuous heels, and the pick of the plenishing was gone. Though upon the rear of the kirk there were two great mounds, that showed us where friend and foe had been burled, that solemn memorial was not so poignant to the heart at the poor relics ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... deserters, skulking criminals, and vagabonds of all descriptions. I had nothing to fear from them, but an exclamation of rage escaped my companion's lips, and, turning to him, I perceived that his face was of the whiteness of ashes. I laughed, for revenge is sweet, and I still smarted a little at his contemptuous treatment of me earlier in ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... extraordinary hour of twelve o'clock on the following night, an order was sent to the two secretaries of state, North and Fox, that they should deliver up the seals by his majesty's command; adding the contemptuous injunction, that they should send them by the under-secretaries, the king not suffering a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... of Letters," so called, said, in a rather contemptuous way, I thought, that he had n't got so far as that. He was n't quite up to moral reflections on toll-men and ticket-takers. Sentiment ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the blacks had been rather forward during the night, and throughout this day they lay about my tent pointing to their empty stomachs, and behaving in a contemptuous manner, although we had given them most of our kangaroo. At length I determined to send them off, if this could be done without quarrelling with them. I directed Burnett to take some men with fixed bayonets and march in line towards them. This move answered very well, the natives receded to ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... pardoned the slighting words and condoned the insult to his niece, no one had a right to exact vengeance; and in truth, whatever were his arguments, he so dealt with the two young men as to force them into shaking hands before they separated, though with a contemptuous look on either side—a scowl from Sedley, a sneer from Peregrine, boding ill for the ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... other offences, not capital, of a like tendency, but without any actual design against the king in contemplation, such as contempts of the king and his government, riotous assemblings for political purposes, and the like; and in general all contemptuous, indecent, or malicious observations upon his person and government, whether by writing or speaking, or by tokens, calculated to lessen him in the esteem of his subjects, or weaken his government, or raise jealousies of him amongst the people, will fall under the notion of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... night, when the time for shutting up came; though it generally happened now that the boy was paying his friends an evening visit, and was therefore at hand to put up the shutters for Oliver. Tony could not keep away from the place. Though he felt a boy's contemptuous pity for the poor old man's declining faculties as regarded business, he had a very high veneration for his learning. Nothing pleased him better than to sit upon the old box near the door, his elbows on his knees, ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton

... remainder of dinner; he was perfectly raging with annoyance, his fighting blood was up. And when at the first possible moment after the dessert arrived she swept from the room, her eyes met his as he held the door and they were again full of contemptuous hate. ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... disbelieve, deny, discredit, disown. descubrir discover, reveal, expose, uncover, make known. descuidado, -a care-free. desde prep. from. desdn m. disdain, scorn, contempt. desdeo m. disdain, scorn. desdeoso, -a scornful, contemptuous. desdicha f. unhappiness, wretchedness, misery. desdichado, -a unhappy, unfortunate, wretched. desear desire, covet. desembozar unmuffle. desengao m. disillusion. deseo m. desire, longing. desesperacin f. despair. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... them by going, slowly and with apparent composure, toward the corridor door. There she paused, looking at first one and then the other with an evil smile so openly contemptuous that it affected them strongly. There was something in it that made it flagrantly insulting. Hastings turned away from her. Judge Wilton gave her look for look, but his already flushed face ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... between the wish not to be harsh and the fear that she might mislead him. "I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel contempt," she said, evasively. "And all I ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... peace, all offenders against justice met with their deserts; and as it is a query, whether on its first institution, any law from the bench was more honestly and impartially administered than this very Lynch law, which has now had its name prostituted by the most barbarous excesses and contemptuous violation of all law whatever. The examples I am able to bring forward of Lynch law, in its primitive state, will be found to have been based upon necessity, and a due regard to morals and to justice. For instance, the harmony of a well-conducted ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... personal recollection. I remember his telling me twenty years ago—that is, during the Spanish War—how the German Ambassador in London had approached him officially with the request that a portion of the Philippine Islands should be ceded—Heavens knows why—to the Kaiser. I can well recall his contemptuous imitation of the manner of the request. "You haf so many islands; why could you not give us some?" I asked Hay what he had replied. With a somewhat grim smile he answered: "I told him: 'Not an ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... the emirs affected a tone of contemptuous superiority; at the same time they brought a body of 8000 men within reach, and put every possible difficulty in the way of the English efforts to procure information. After tedious negotiations, in the course of which British pride was humbled more than once, the embassy received permission ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... let no emotion Of seeming laudable humanity Mislead thee; take not from thyself the power Of acting as necessity commands. Thou canst not pardon her, thou canst not save her: Then heap not on thyself the odious blame, That thou, with cruel and contemptuous triumph, Didst glut thyself with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... with?" asked Simek in a slightly contemptuous tone—"with your fingernails? If so, you had better send Sigokow to do battle, for she could beat the ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... pieces of flesh off his own thighs, without the least injury to himself, and gave them to Manabozho, saying, with a contemptuous air, "This is the way we do." He then left ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... was cold, clear, and contemptuous—"do you call yourself a captain? And is this your notion of discipline? I guess, young fellow, if we'd had you with General Greene in Carolina we'd have combed you out and flogged the drunken ragamuffins you're ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... cup and drank, then made Peter give him the bottle and slipped it under his pillow, grinning disagreeably, as if he had outwitted some one. His eyes followed Peter about the room with a contemptuous, unfriendly expression. It seemed to me that he despised him for ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... quietly, and she did not detect the contemptuous insolence under the slow words until he had nearly completed his meaning, "you'd like to have me tell you where I'm riding from and why? And maybe you'd like to have me take off my shoes so you can look in them for your lost treasures?" Now was his contempt unhidden. He strode quickly ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... down the aisle of the car looking keenly from side to side, scanning each face alertly, until his eyes lighted on the two young officers. At Bob Wetherill he merely glanced knowingly, but he fixed his eyes on young Wainwright with a steady, amused, contemptuous gaze as he came toward him; a gaze so noticeable that it could not fail to arrest the attention of any who were looking; and he finished the affront with a lingering turn of his head as he passed by, and a slight ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... crawls into hatred, hatred almost motiveless—the Instans Tyrannus. A faint vein of humour runs through it. The king describes what has been; his hatred has passed. He sees how small and fanciful it was, and the illustrations he uses to express it tell us that; though they carry with them also the contemptuous intensity of his past hatred. The swell of the hatred remains, though the hatred is past. So we are not left face to face with absolute evil, with the corruption hate engenders in the soul. God has intervened, and the worst of it ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... perfect. In truth I am ashamed of even combating such an essential falsehood. Were it not that here and there a weak soul is paralysed by the presence of the monstrous lie, and we dare not allow sympathy to be swallowed up of even righteous disdain, a contemptuous denial would be enough. ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... ha! [Grimly.] He will order me into the street! [With concentrated fury.] That is it! They shut you out! They build a wall about themselves! Aristocracy! [Clenching his fast.] Very well! So be it! You sit within your fortress of privilege! You are haughty and contemptuous, flaunting your power! But I'll breach your battlements, I'll lay them in the dust! I'll bring you to ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... her mind that her life was not to be spoiled, her brilliant future sacrificed, for the sake of John Hammond; but the wound which she had suffered in renouncing him was still fresh, her feelings were still sore. Any contemptuous mention of him stung ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... have called him Absalom or Alcibiades), as soon as let out of his traveling box, displayed to an admiring crowd a tail so long it might be called a "serial," gave one contemptuous glance at the premises, and departed so rapidly, by running and occasional flights, that three men and a boy were unable to catch up with him for several hours. Belle was not allowed her liberty, as we saw more trouble ahead. A large yard, inclosed top and sides with wire netting, at last restrained ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... to where the sergeant held my horse, mounted, and crossing the Yamhill River close by, called back in Chinook from the farther bank that "the sixteen men who killed the woman must be delivered up, and my six-shooter also." This was responded to by contemptuous laughter, so I went back to the military post somewhat crestfallen, and made my report of the turn affairs had taken, inwardly longing for another chance to bring the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... was elegant opulence and refined splendor, and by whose cradle Fortune herself stood godmother. She seems like a perfect rose, blooming in a precious vase of gold and gems and exquisite workmanship. Camiola's contemptuous rebuff of her insolent courtier lover; her merciless ridicule of her fantastical, half-witted suitor; her bitter and harsh rebuke of Adorni when he draws his sword upon the man who had insulted her; above all, her hard and cold insensibility ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... prevail among gentlemen, whether as friends or foes. After standing for a moment, he glanced from the one to the other, his face still hideously pale; and ultimately, fixing his eye upon the stranger, he viewed him from head to foot, and again from foot to head, with a look of such contemptuous curiosity, as certainly was strongly calculated to excite the stranger's indignation. Finding the baronet ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... illimitable empire and uncompromising despotism. It moves down the map of the world, as a glacier moves down the Alps, patient and relentless, startling the jealous rivals that watch its course, and granting contemptuous peace to the allies that shiver in ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... nails upon a table and came striding down the long room to the door; pushed Jim unceremoniously aside and stood upon the step. He was just in time to look into the rageful, blue eyes of Jack Allen, walking with a very straight back and a contemptuous smile on his lips, between the Captain and one of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... of a ginger-jar. She brought the coins over to the table and began to arrange them in little heaps, evidently making some calculation concerning the domestic finance, while her face assumed a curious expression of contemptuous thrift. It was as if she was making her reckoning with scrupulous accuracy and at the same time ridiculing her own penury and promising herself that there would come a time when she should make calculations concerning the treasures of emperors. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... I met Lady Glenmire and Miss Pole setting out on a long walk to find some old woman who was famous in the neighbourhood for her skill in knitting woollen stockings. Miss Pole said to me, with a smile half-kindly and half-contemptuous upon her countenance, "I have been just telling Lady Glenmire of our poor friend Mrs Forrester, and her terror of ghosts. It comes from living so much alone, and listening to the bug-a-boo stories ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Lamar forward. Norton gave a contemptuous look at him. "Delanne," he said, "I knew you were a crook when you tried to infringe on my patent, but I didn't think you were coward ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... pleasures it afforded. He was not addicted to those intemperate habits which characterise "Blessed Priests" in general; spirits he never tasted, nor any food that could be termed a luxury, or even a comfort. His communion with the people was brief, and marked by a tone of severe contemptuous misanthropy. He seldom stirred abroad except during morning, or in the evening twilight, when he might be seen gliding amidst the coming darkness, like a dissatisfied spirit. His life was an austere one, and his devotional practices were said to be of the most remorseful character. Such ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... With a kind of contemptuous snort he lumbered back into the consulting-room and closed the door. Had he been offering an explanation in case she had overheard? Or merely expressing aloud a general opinion regarding patients, all of whom he evidently held in scorn? ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... order to discover truth, the less likely you are to reason correctly.'[87] The amazing crudity of this avowed obscurantism is likely to make the orthodox apologist writhe, and to move the rationalist to contemptuous laughter. In this and many other cases, Newman seems to love to caricature himself, and to put his beliefs in that form in which they outrage common sense most completely. We can imagine nothing more calculated to drive ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... the Union be poured in by thousands, I shall not again interfere on the floor of Congress, since the house have virtually declared that there is nothing contemptuous or improper in offering them, and are willing again to afford Mr. Adams an opportunity of sweeping all the strings of discord that exist in our country. I acted as I thought for the best, being sincerely desirous to check that man, who, if he could ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... room that they complain of," said Mr. Day, with a contemptuous gesture. "Those sneaking inspectors seem bent on making us as much trouble and ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... Winnington and Will Locke took to flushing when each other's names were mentioned—sitting bolt upright and declining to comment on each other's works, or else dismissing each other's efforts in a few supremely contemptuous words. Certainly the poor man rejected the rich not one whit less decidedly than the rich man rejected the poor, and the Mordecais have always the best of it. If we and our neighbours will pick out each other's eyes, commend us to the part of brave little Jack, rather than that of the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... and haggard-eyed, had picked himself up; revolver in hand he stood on the stoep. His men came out, cursed him to his face while giving him their contemptuous reports brought the dead bodies of their comrades into the house and laid them out decently, together with the body of the white-bearded Boer. After that they mounted their horses without a word to him and rode off. And he let them ride; for his authority was gone; and he knew that they justly laid ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... must in fairness be explained that they were for the most part possessors of obstinate hens that would not lay eggs. Eggs were firm at twenty-five shillings a dozen, and the hen that remained so contemptuous of mammon, so unredeemed by cupidity, so unmoved by the "golden" opportunity, most certainly deserved death. Therefore it was that an odd tough member of the feathered tribe was now and then discussed in secret. There ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... mode of stating or enforcing them to give offence. The book will win its way by the natural force of what truth there is in it, and the most that an opponent can say is, that the author is in error; it cannot be said that he is arrogant, contemptuous, self-asserting, or that he needlessly shocks the opinions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... situation fully prepared: an inflexible people, a weak governor, a party of believers in divine right, and a contemptuous soldiery. The next event, which all but ended in violence, showed that there needed but a little tenser situation in order to ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... then, your lordship who is afraid of attempting the rescue of the countess!" interrupted Stephano, in a contemptuous tone. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... with a contemptuous sneer. "Didn't you just tell me that we were living in an age when no one has any money except those who are in business? The richest of my friends have only enough for themselves, even if they have enough. The time of old stockings, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... slipper. To stand upon his pantables, was a contemptuous mode of speech, to express a very dishonourable man's "standing upon his honour," which could so easily be slipped from under him. "What pride is equal to the pope's in making kings kiss his pantables." Sir E. Sandys. "He standeth upon his pantables, and regardeth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the passage, I was thinking whether my dress could be so very ridiculous as my old cousin thought it, and trying in vain to recollect any evidence of a similar contemptuous estimate on the part of that beautiful and garrulous dandy. I could not—quite the reverse, indeed. Still I was uncomfortable and feverish—girls of my then age will easily conceive how miserable, under similar circumstances, such a misgiving would ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... Claudius (when both they and the Jews were expelled from Rome, "because of their perpetual turbulence, at the instigation of Chrestus," as Suetonius ignorantly observed), and during the Neronian persecution—never once alludes to them, and only mentions the Jews to apply a few contemptuous remarks to the idleness of their sabbaths, and to call them ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... gentleman the indifferent and contemptuous regard with which one might look at and dismiss ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... remark that the dissoluteness of the middle portion of the century was not associated with the cynical and contemptuous view about women that usually goes with relaxed morality. There was a more or less distinct consciousness of a truth which has ever since grown into clearer prominence with the advance of thought since the Revolution. It is that the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... "come" so that not mountains would have dared stay, much less a frightened little boy in a girl's dress. In his proper garb there had been instant and contemptuous flight. But the dress debased all his manly instincts. He came crawling, as the worm. The recent Ben Blunt pulled a cap over a shorn head and ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... this scene as the terrier he resembled might have done, and took instant and instinctive dislike to the new- comer. With a contemptuous sniff he thought to himself, "There's mateerial enoof in ye for so mooch toward a flock as a calf and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... scene is that in which his confession and attempts to atone are received by the contemptuous man of the world, who sees in them only weakness and cowardice, despite his scorn of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... the sin against the Holy Ghost be taken literally for blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. For such blasphemy as Our Lord speaks of, always proceeds from contemptuous malice. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... lying inert for weeks, and confident in the gigantic boom which acted as their shield to the front, and the show of batteries which kept guard over them on either flank and to the rear, awaited the coming attack in a spirit of half-contemptuous gaiety. They had struck their topmasts and unbent their sails, and by way of challenge dressed their fleet with flags. One ship, the Calcutta, had been captured from the English, and by way of special insult they hung out the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... Kilvert's Life of Bishop Hurd, p. 97. Dean Swift, in his Project for the Advancement of Religion, speaks of curates in the most contemptuous terms. 'In London, a clergyman, with one or two sorry curates, has sometimes the care of above ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... his criticisms. Dean Stanley, in his funeral sermon, charitably says, that in pronouncing the population of England to be "thirty millions, mostly fools," Carlyle merely meant that "few are chosen and strait is the gate," generously adding—"There was that in him, in spite of his contemptuous descriptions of the people, which endeared him to those who knew him best. The idols of their market-place he trampled under foot, but their joys and sorrows, their cares and hopes, were to him revered things." Another critic pleads for his discontent that it had in it a noble side, like ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... the paper across the table with a contemptuous "Bah!" and Max laughed in his easy, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... line which he sought to adopt in the cross-examination of one of the witnesses; but at the same time I had no intention to cast any reflection on the learned counsel who I am sure is known to you all as a most able—" but before his lordship could proceed any further James interposed, and in a contemptuous voice exclaimed: "My lord, I have borne your lordship's censure, spare me your ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... a contemptuous anger in her eye which the man could not face. He lost all control of himself, uttered coarse oaths, and stood quivering. Then the woman began to lecture him; she talked steadily, acrimoniously, for more ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... but poor little Jasper cried out so lamentably, when he was about to be bound to a stranger, that Stephen stepped forward in his stead, begging that the boy might go with Giles. The soldier made a contemptuous sound, but consented, and Stephen found that his companion in misfortune, whose left elbow was tied to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... was rallying his forces at Dunbar—was marching to the relief of Edinburgh. Charles, acting on the advice of his generals, marched out to meet him. Cope's capacity for blundering was by no means exhausted. He affected a contemptuous disregard for his foes, delayed attack in defiance of his wisest generals, was taken unawares in the gray morning of the 21st, at Prestonpans, and routed completely and ignominiously in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... came a contemptuous laugh from the deck of the Ithuriel, the rapid ringing of an electric bell, and the disappearance of her company under cover. Then with one mighty leap she rose two thousand feet into the air, and before the astounded and disgusted captain of H.M. cruiser ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... like the lesser Englishman that he was, his own tastes to those of the alien West. In the present instance he felt it incumbent upon him not only to assert his principles, but to act upon them with his usual energy. How far he was impelled by the half-contemptuous passiveness of his companions it would be ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... pardon,' said Mr. Lennox, in the half-contemptuous, half-indulgent tone he generally used to Edith. 'But I believe I know the difference between the charms of a dress and the charms of a woman. No mere bonnet would have made Miss Hale's eyes so lustrous and yet so soft, or her lips so ripe and red—and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... against Lorenzo Dow at this time. The young preacher was not only ungraceful and ungracious in manner, but he had severe limitations in education and frequently assumed toward his elders an air needlessly arrogant and contemptuous. On the other hand he must reasonably have been offended by the advice so frequently given him in gratuitous and patronizing fashion. Soon after the last rebuff just recorded, however, he says, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... missionaries get less of them than they would desire. There are probably few missionaries who have not been irritated at one time or another when their houses and their persons were subjected to amazed, or delighted, or even half-contemptuous scrutiny by the curious. Can't they have the decency to keep out of what is my own private business? the missionary thinks. Yet if we belong to the day, if we are children of light, why should ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson

... minister, who was at once offended and alarmed at the step. Perrot was carried to the Tower, and at length, in April 1592, put upon his trial for high treason. The principal heads of accusation were;—his contemptuous words of the queen;—his secret encouragement of O'Rourk's rebellion and the Spanish invasion, and his favoring of traitors. Of all these charges except the first he seems to have proved his innocence, and on this he excused himself by ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... all for too many years even to accord it a glance of contemptuous indifference—when he had anything else to occupy his mind; and just now his mind was on a lady in black with three ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... fool; make game of, make a fool of, make an April fool of^; play a practical joke; lead one a dance, run the rig upon, have a fling at, scout; mob. Adj. disrespectful; aweless, irreverent; disparaging &c 934; insulting &c v.; supercilious, contemptuous, patronizing &c (scornful) 930; rude, derisive, sarcastic; scurrile, scurrilous; contumelious. unrespected^, unworshiped^, unenvied^, unsaluted^; unregarded^, disregarded. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... he asked in a slightly contemptuous tone. "You never heard of me starting any rough stuff when there was a pinch ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... outset I would ask those readers who are inclined to turn with feelings of contemptuous impatience from what they deem an unprofitable discussion of idle speculations which have little or nothing to do with a problem they hold to be one of purely literary interest, to be solved by literary comparison and criticism, and by no other method, to withhold their verdict till they have carefully ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... continued as follows When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark, But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll

... only by a contemptuous sniff, and the triumvirate descending from their pedestal, all six men ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... enough, from the fashion-plates of the day, what the Mashers were in outward semblance; from the lampoons, their mode of life. Unlike the dandies of the Georgian era, they pretended to no classic taste and, wholly contemptuous of the Aesthetes, recognised no art save the art of dress. Much might be written about the Mashers. The restaurant—destined to be, in after years, so salient a delight of London—was not known to them, but they were often admirable upon the steps of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... him out!" yelled another; while the object of this outburst of animosity, recovering himself sufficiently to glance round with a contemptuous sneer on his face, fell back, and endeavoured to hide his confusion by entering into conversation ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... know what I could mean! He had nothing to say to me. I gave him a contemptuous glance, he followed the grooms, and I went ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... ordinary duties, who brought to their fulfillment a wholesome, kindly, but distinctly strong character of his own. Laurie hardly knew whether he was pleased or disappointed. He would almost have preferred a wild creature with rolling eyes, in a cloak; yet he would have been secretly amused and contemptuous ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... to mould and polish the social amalgamation at West Point without it. Some of the rough specimens annually admitted care nothing for regulations. It is fun to them to be punished. Nothing so effectually makes a plebe submissive as hazing. That contemptuous look and imperious bearing lowers a plebe, I sometimes think, in his own estimation. He is in a manner cowed and made to feel that he must obey, and not disobey; to feel that he is a plebe, and must expect a plebe's portion. He is taught by it to stay in his place, and not to "bone popularity" ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... veil she wore to conceal her identity could not soften the conspicuous pictures. Newsboys called her name, and the gorilla story, Wrentz, and Blount's names, together—every passenger in the car, it seemed to her, men, women, and children, were discussing her. There were silly jokes, contemptuous criticism, half-laughing suggestions that there was something "queer about Miss Marvin." just behind her, she heard one woman say to another, "But, then, my dear, what could you expect of any girl whose mother was an ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... innocent or guilty, not unnaturally demurred; but the powerful warrior was firm, and the king at last yielded. When the appointed day arrived, Alfonso made his appearance, surrounded by his courtiers, all obsequiously vying in praise of his glory and virtue, and contemptuous denunciations of his daring accuser. Rodrigo stood alone and gazed on the king sternly. Some of the nobles endeavored to dissuade him from holding this attitude of opposition, and to induce him to forego the demand which he had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... appeared eager to claim proprietorship. He gave a loud, contemptuous snort, and threw the rope far over toward the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... contemptuous cloud of smoke. "Not in the least, Mr. Ware. George was good-looking. What Denham is, you can see for yourself. Denham ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume



Words linked to "Contemptuous" :   contemptuousness, scornful, insulting, disrespectful, contempt, disdainful



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