toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

disdain
in a sentence

show 188 more with this conextual meaning
  • Harry could tell he was trying to sound disdainful, as though what Moody was saying was barely worth his notice, but his hands gave him away; they had balled themselves into fists.   (source)
    disdainful = superior (without respect)
  • The reason for the simplicity isn't disdain for uniqueness, as the other factions have sometimes interpreted it. Everything—our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles—is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed, and envy, which are just forms of selfishness.   (source)
    disdain = a dislike or lack of respect
  • But the dichotomy of love and disdain living side-by-side is what surprises me.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • The work that "came in the door" to the generation of Jewish lawyers from the Bronx and Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, then, was the work the white-shoe firms disdained:   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • Every time we try to stop, we look at Peeta's attempt to maintain a disdainful expression and it sets us off again.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • "Look, fighting is all fine, I suppose. And people who build things ..." She looked at Leo in disdain. "Well, I suppose someone has to get their hands dirty. But you need charm on your side."   (source)
    disdain = disrespect and distaste
  • Alfred T Slipper was a janitor. Most of the time, people looked right past him. Sometimes (often, in fact) they treated him with disdain.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • The butcher always treated him with disdain, as if he were something unclean.   (source)
  • When He looked in our hearts to weigh our worth, would he find love for our Congolese neighbors, or disdain?   (source)
  • “That way,” she said.
    I nearly hooted with delight. “Quite wrong. You're off by forty degrees or more.”
    “Forty degrees,” she muttered disdainfully. “I'll just walk downhill. That'll take me back to the coast.”
    “There's a lot of coast on an island.”   (source)
    disdainfully = with an undeserved sense of superiority
  • Maybe they were sorry for the years of their own disdain. Maybe they were simply nice people who could hold meanness toward each other for just so long and...   (source)
    disdain = disrespect and rejection
  • He stared at Zeitoun and Todd, his face curious and disdainful.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • She looked up at the second net with a disdainful expression.   (source)
  • An hour after the lights went out, disdaining Mammachi's frightened pleading, little Ammu crept back into the house through a ventilator to rescue her new gumboots that she loved more than anything else.   (source)
    disdaining = rejecting as not good enough (showing a lack of respect for Mammachi's pleading)
  • With a look of disdainful exasperation Gretel set the tray down on the ground and marched out of the room.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • Murray, with straight reddish hair and a look of weary disdain, glares at me.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • he continued to use it, with a certain disdain for fashion   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • "You think now to teach me my trade?" he asked, and he did not try to hide the disdain in his voice.   (source)
  • The welder is in, an old man in his sixties or seventies, and he looks at me disdainfully…a complete reversal from the waitress.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect; or with a sense of superiority
  • ...the white people on the streets outside treated them with humiliating disdain.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect with an undeserved sense of superiority
  • We passed Joan, coming out of her room, and I gave her a meaning, disdainful smile, and she ducked back and waited until we had gone by.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • The fact that any sort of religious faith was so disdained at Harvard and so important to the poor—not just in Haiti but elsewhere, too—made me even more convinced that faith must be something good.   (source)
    disdained = disrespected
  • "Wandermeyer," I offered, with just the right touch of disdain I thought.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • Although he disdained pork, he enjoyed his glass of liquor.   (source)
    disdained = rejected
  • Her expression of bored disdain drops immediately.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect -- suggesting distaste and an undeserved sense of superiority
  • I knew my family would be waiting to share news of the day. The very monotony I had lately disdained cried out to me: I am essential. Without me you will wither,   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • He was disdainful of anyone who had a regular crowd of parasites loafing about their stores, discussing the taste of yuca and their last lays.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • "Ah, right," he said, eyeing the veggie burgers disdainfully,   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect (as though they weren't good enough for him)
  • "Of course there were no survivors," she said. No survivors, blunt and uncaring. ... She sniffed disdainfully.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect -- suggesting distaste and a sense of superiority
  • In the nineteenth century, wealthy American women disdained the women's suffrage movement,   (source)
    disdained = showed a lack of respect for
  • It was a mug, with a cartoon of a cat holding a bunch of balloons—the kind of gift that, in another mood, I would have disdained.   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • "Pig!" She spat out at him viciously, her nostrils flaring in a look of savage disdain.   (source)
    disdain = distaste
  • A hundred yards away, inside a long, low mess hall, Cedric Gilliam looks disdainfully at the steam trays of corned beef hash before sliding forward his Styrofoam tray for a ladleful.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect; or sense of distaste
  • The chairs and stalls seem to have been placed there without the slightest concern for the shape of the walls or position of the columns, as if wishing to express their indifference to or disdain for Gothic architecture.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • The anti-Zionist students remained aloof, bitter, disdainful of our Zionism.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • Inside, the clerk eyed him with a mix of disdain and pity.   (source)
    disdain = contempt (lack of respect)
  • I disdain to answer such an attack.   (source)
    disdain = reject (the attack) as unworthy
  • Summerset opened the door with his usual disdain.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect -- suggesting distaste and a sense of superiority
  • It may even be that I saw the disdain in places where it didn't exist.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • The majestic walls ... seem to stare at the unworthy trespassers with disdain.   (source)
  • Pilar is like her grandmother, disdainful of rules, of religion, of everything meaningful.   (source)
    disdainful = lacking respect
  • She tossed his hand back at him with disdain.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • NICK (With great disdain): I just don't see why you feel you have to subject other people to it.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • All along, he offered himself as a model of liberal reaction, which is initially fascination and disdain, but then relief.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • He smiled slightly, with a touch of the disdain for which he was rapidly becoming notorious.   (source)
  • And if we were never envious, they never seemed vain. Helene and Germaine, a little disdainful, aloof perhaps, but Louise, not even that.   (source)
    disdainful = superior (not respecting them that much)
  • Ta-Kumsaw gazed disdainfully at Taleswapper.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect (or with a sense of superiority)
  • And sometimes he broke his own copper—big as a shield, its buying power as great as three thousand of the white man's dollars—broke it to show to his guests his disdain for his own wealth.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • He felt, like all the Colonists, a slight disdain for the rest of mankind.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need;   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • But still he had felt different from and superior to the others; always he had watched them with some mockery, some mocking disdain,   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • "...Men are all the same."
    I saw Kunthi shrug with a slight disdain; Janaki was quiet.   (source)
  • With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside.   (source)
    disdainfully = with distaste
  • She grunts disdainfully, her back to him;   (source)
    disdainfully = with an air of superiority and disrespect
  • Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.   (source)
    disdain = showing a lack of respect
  • I knew now why Clarice did not disdain my underclothes as Alice had done.   (source)
    disdain = to reject as not good enough
  • She made a point of giving a disdainful look to every soldier she met,   (source)
    disdainful = condescending (showing a lack of respect)
  • ...the love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • The inspector's tone was disdainful.   (source)
    disdainful = lacking respect
  • So in the warm summer days the lonesome child sat on her stoop and pretended disdain for the group of children playing on the sidewalk.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect or interest (because they are not good enough)
  • He stood above her disdainfully with...   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect; or with a sense of superiority
  • But the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdain.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect and air of superiority
  • My whole mind was filled with a growing disdain and loathing.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • ...he had disdained to enquire, he really could not waste his time over such trivialities.   (source)
    disdained = to reject as not of value
  • He takes off his hat to Mrs. Pearce, who disdains the salutation and goes out.   (source)
    disdains = ignores (as though not worthy of her notice)
  • They ignored traffic regulations, they disdained the people, returning from theaters and movies, who dotted the streets which unrolled before the flying gray hood.   (source)
    disdained = treated as inferior
  • When I met him on his rounds now, I thought he carried his head more disdainfully than ever,   (source)
    disdainfully = with a sense of superiority
  • Their own compatriots--save those previously known or properly accredited--they treated with an even more pronounced disdain; so that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a Mingott, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken tete-a-tete.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • "Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus," said Anne disdainfully.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect
  • disdain of innocence.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect (as though it is inferior)
  • 'Girls,' said Peter, 'are always so hasty tempered.'
      'I should like to know what boys are!' said Bobbie, with fine disdain.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • "Well," said Paul, "if she looks at a man she says haughtily 'Nevermore,' and if she looks at herself in the looking-glass she says disdainfully 'Nevermore,' and if she thinks back she says it in disgust, and if she looks forward she says it cynically."   (source)
  • The men in the fort disdained the newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief.   (source)
    disdained = had a lack of respect
  • a look of haughty disdain and intense bitterness shot through her melancholy eyes,   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • Philip had disdained humanity in the mass; he adopted the attitude of one who wraps himself in solitariness and watches with disgust the antics of the vulgar;   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect (as though she was unworthy of him)
  • He veiled a glance of disdain at his fellows   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • The general gazed at his host disdainfully.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect
  • His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to spit like Tom Sawyer;   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • ...a steamer which, disdaining to rise upon the waves, invariably cut through them.   (source)
    disdaining = as though the waves are not worthy of consideration
  • Tell me, isn't it humiliating to think that a man has disdained your love, that he hasn't cared for it?   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude—each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts—Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile.   (source)
    disdainful = full of disrespect
  • Among our valued friends is there not some one or other who is a little too self-confident and disdainful;   (source)
    disdainful = lacking respect for others with an undeserved sense of superiority
  • ...asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.   (source)
    disdain = lack of respect
  • These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty years between them, but they already represented the whole society of man; envy on the one side, disdain on the other.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • But though his lips disdained to address me, his eyes were very loquacious.   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • Milady had listened to all this menacing tirade with a smile of disdain on her lips, but rage in her heart.   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect (indicating that she is above such talk)
  • "Oh," she replied bitterly, "they are poor charms since you disdained them."   (source)
    disdained = rejected as not good enough
  • ...he answered, waving me disdainfully aside.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect
  • George drew himself up, and smiled disdainfully.   (source)
    disdainfully = with a lack of respect; or with a sense of superiority
  • Let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me.   (source)
    disdain = reject as not good enough
  • lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.   (source)
    disdained = rejected as beneath him
  • your selfish disdain of the feelings of others   (source)
    disdain = a lack of respect
  • there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion,   (source)
  • Both are younger men than I, and in my time men who were even greater have I known and none of them disdained me.   (source)
    disdained = disrespected (showing a lack of respect)
  • Mishka continued in disdain.†   (source)
  • They disdained our underground gatherings.†   (source)
  • Uncle Max snorted disdainfully.†   (source)
  • She glanced over at me with the usual look of disdain and started to load her clothes into the washer.†   (source)
  • On all sides of him students were tittering, and the Messengers (including Corliss) were sneering disdainfully.†   (source)
  • And right there he posed for the camerahe had that disdainful model look down pat—and suddenly I could see it: the jaw square as the corner of a cover, the chiseled cheeks, the perfect teeth and hair.†   (source)
  • Williams said this with a disdainful look.†   (source)
  • The intimidating figure stared down at me with disdain, as if I were less than a piece of lint on his coat.†   (source)
  • Every item of her appearance, her very familiarity with the courtroom, where I felt out of place and off balance, her confident glances at Frank, her fellow lawyer, seemed to me to exude the odor of disdain, and the wish to take from us what we had that she wanted, but clearly didn't need.†   (source)
  • She immediately forgot the names of the first four: a gangly, haughty boy; a hulking brute; a disdainful runt of a man; and a sniveling, hawknosed prat who claimed he had an affinity for knives.†   (source)
  • Five nights out in the field now I still can't get used to the crumbling walls, the lines of worn clothing hanging from balconies, the clusters of young beggars hoping for a bite to eat from passersby …. but at the very least, my disdain has faded.†   (source)
  • He was precisely the sort of north country lunatic who gave Hester great disdain for Sawyer Depot, and led her to maintain her residence in the college community of Durham year-round.†   (source)
  • She took her new shoes, holding them disdainfully, and put them on a chair.†   (source)
  • Sister Drummond looked with disdain into the bowl.†   (source)
  • But to hear these Silvers discuss them so, with such disdain, is perplexing.†   (source)
  • The four of us returned to Room 43, aglow in the success of it, convinced that the Creek would never again see such a prank, and it didn't even occur to me that I might get in trouble until the Eagle opened the door to our room and stood above us, and shook his head disdainfully.†   (source)
  • Despite his ever-growing disdain for her, the emptiness of her being gone still floated like an unbreakable bubble within him.†   (source)
  • The young knight gave him a disdainful smile.†   (source)
  • He slung it disdainfully on the table.†   (source)
  • He couldn't help but sound disdainful.†   (source)
  • She was sure she'd go mad if all the market shopkeepers looked at her with the same disdain as Chang Sacha did.†   (source)
  • A moment later the crowd's cheers turned into cries of disdain, and 1 turned to see what made them so unhappy.†   (source)
  • "That was just for show," he said disdainfully.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Scharff turns a disdainful eye toward me, as though I'm somehow responsible for this fact.†   (source)
  • "Because Noah is every father's dream come true," Lila said, her disdain clear.†   (source)
  • It seems then that the Three Score and Ten do not disdain meat; they simply are too stupid to hunt and kill it.†   (source)
  • Once legalized it was disdained, in large part because it had been legalized to make the game safer, and a big point in the game's favor, to those who played it, was its unsafety.†   (source)
  • Burnham was pressuring him to take all manner of shortcuts to get the Court of Honor into presentable shape, such as having his men fill pots with rhododendrons and palms to decorate terraces, precisely the kind of showy transient measures that Olmsted disdained.†   (source)
  • Who would disdain to subscnl,e under this flowing banner?†   (source)
  • Up until then my brother had never shown any emotion to me other than disdain.†   (source)
  • But Yetta couldn't back down now, not with Miss Milhouse staring so disdainfully.†   (source)
  • Bee was quietly disdainful of wisecracks, sarcasm and other family business.†   (source)
  • One or two shot me sideways glances, there might have been a flicker of interest or disdain, I couldn't be sure.†   (source)
  • Bast sniffed disdainfully.†   (source)
  • Disdains the easy, symbolic patriotism.†   (source)
  • The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.†   (source)
  • Then the wrinkled man moved to reenter the shed, but before he left he turned to the elderly man, who was looking at him with a degree of disdain, and elegantly doffed his hat.†   (source)
  • "With her bony fingers," Fox put in, falling well short of his target of disdain.†   (source)
  • His disdain for them was met with laughter.†   (source)
  • And, of course, to show that he accepted her disdain.†   (source)
  • —that there mingled in her regal beauty something of the too-quick, diffident, plebeian disdain.†   (source)
  • Upperclassmen treated their juniors with haughtiness and disdain.†   (source)
  • "Here are your sights, here are your sounds, and here," he said, handing Milo the last of them disdainfully, "are your words."†   (source)
  • She's clad in a loose black robe that softens the disdain on her masked face.†   (source)
  • For years she had consoled herself with her disdainful opinion of Norah Henry, a bit imperial, used to ease and order, a woman who might have left Phoebe in an institution.†   (source)
  • He reached across my lap and began to peel Greg's fingers off, one by one, with a look of pure disdain.†   (source)
  • This area contained some of the city's largest, most stately homes, but the fire treated them with the same disdain it did the humblest wooden cottages on De Koven Street.†   (source)
  • I pulled myself upright and tried to look disdainful, but the bath wasn't over.†   (source)
  • My voice drips with disdain.†   (source)
  • Up to now, I always thought that the Others felt nothing toward us except disdain with maybe a little disgust mixed in, the way we feel about rats and cockroaches and bedbugs and other nasty lower forms of life.†   (source)
  • Javi asks, disdained.†   (source)
  • Like Mike, he disdained socks.†   (source)
  • He wasn't haughty or disdainful, or stuffy, as High Chancellor Thomas was.†   (source)
  • Mr. Armour walks us to the door, shaking Margot's hand and nodding almost imperceptibly at me with a strained smile that I think might be pity, or possibly, disdain.†   (source)
  • All of the companions crowded around him with exclamations of surprise and astonished whoops, save for Magwich, who stood a distance away, sniffing in disdain at the camaraderie of the others.†   (source)
  • She would have every reason to look at me with complete disdain — but she didn't.†   (source)
  • And with a movement of his entire body, much too fast for me to see, he was suddenly standing disdainfully at the foot of the steps.†   (source)
  • Her Grandmother Clara managed to keep that immense covered wagon of a house rolling with its population of eccentrics, even though she had no domestic talent and disdained the basic operations, of arithmetic to the point of forgetting how to add.†   (source)
  • D'Ablo tilted his head slightly, eyeing them with utter disdain.†   (source)
  • "If there were any such statute," the clerk replied, his nose rising disdainfully, "it would certainly not apply to you.†   (source)
  • Men—I knew this before I should have known—would perceive her disdain and would want her.†   (source)
  • "I'm not scared of bears," Mia said disdainfully.†   (source)
  • Lonny asked, with the same disdain most people heap onto the unsavory subject.†   (source)
  • He'd never been treated with such disdain.†   (source)
  • Her disdain vanished.†   (source)
  • General John Burgoyne disdainfully dubbed them "a preposterous parade," a "rabble in arms."†   (source)
  • She disdained the idea of looking at the answer key, so she bypassed the section that gave Wiles' solution.†   (source)
  • Pilgrim now had a corral to himself next to the colts Tom was starting and whose interest, over the double fence, he returned with a mix of suspicion and disdain.†   (source)
  • Managing to surrender with arrogance, the storyteller threw the gun as if disdaining it, and the weapon thudded into the sand at Joe's feet.†   (source)
  • That privilege, along with their mutual disdain, is all the two men have in common.†   (source)
  • She asked, and it was the slowness, the sound of casual curiosity, the tone of taking the implications for granted, that gave to her voice the faintest sound of disdain, "How did you know what I look like in …. my office?"†   (source)
  • Melissa looked disdainfully around Jessica's room.†   (source)
  • "Basketball?" she said, unable to purge the disdain from her voice.†   (source)
  • Courtney wheeled back to Mark, throwing him a look of total disdain.†   (source)
  • That he could, even in complete silence, bring Lia to a state of sexual distraction and turn her almost as scarlet as a poppy in the Villa Doria was a triumph for the academics that the attorney Giuliani loved to disdain, for they had taught Alessandro a thing or two about how to see.†   (source)
  • She hated this young woman who was now leaning against John, the look of puzzlement now replaced by disdain.†   (source)
  • Or even her disdain for Luke's secret dream of being a doctor (not, of course, that he's shared this secret dream with me.†   (source)
  • Kessell heard the conversation and growled in disdain.†   (source)
  • Often his unpopular views, expressed disdainfully and with an air of condescension, provoked his listeners to anger.†   (source)
  • "Nah," I said, "I was just curious:' His disdain for me was palpable.†   (source)
  • The disdain in her gaze was almost tactile.†   (source)
  • "Reporters," said Gabriel disdainfully.†   (source)
  • It had required a week for me to get their measure, but they must have taken mine at our first meeting; and, while there was nothing overtly disdainful in their evident assessment of me, they managed to ignore my presence, and indeed my very existence, with a thoroughness which was somehow disconcerting.†   (source)
  • "If you're so sure," said an impertinent girl, perhaps the one with the disdainful chin, "why don't you go out there and take a look?"†   (source)
  • Sophie told me once—as she went on to reveal certain bits of her life in Cracow which she had previously withheld—that whatever the Professor's grim authoritarian disdain for her, his adoration of his two little grandchildren had been melting, genuine, complete.†   (source)
  • It was astonishing that they had any energy left, after a day's work, to nourish their mutual disdain.†   (source)
  • That which the guests have disdained to order and the cook will not even slop over the cheapest pieces of meat?†   (source)
  • Nelson, though he had not had water since some he had drunk out of a paper cup on the train, passed by the spigot, disdaining to drink where his grandfather had.†   (source)
  • They fed on carrion, did not disdain mice, and eyed Yurii Andreievich from afar, moving after him confidently as though waiting for something.†   (source)
  • Disdainfully.†   (source)
  • But no sooner had the young ex-diplomat been elected as a Federalist to the Massachusetts Legislature when he demonstrated his audacious disdain for narrow partisanship.†   (source)
  • There he was, there in front of her, standing behind the counter as if he were serving goods, Moses the black man, standing there, looking out at her with a lazy, but threatening disdain.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)