contemptible

in a sentence

And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contemptible life and shameful death.  (source) Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 1958

I stare across my room at the rose wallpaper, the eyelet curtains, the yellowing photographs so familiar they are nearly contemptible.  (source) Kathryn Stockett, The Help, 2009

Henryk's life was a hard one. He had chosen it himself and had no intention of changing it, believing that it would be contemptible to live in any other way.  (source) Wladyslaw Szpilman, The Pianist, 1998

...are the most contemptible, cowardly, and vile breed of criminals,  (source) Alexs Pate, Amistad, 1997

Here is idolatry even without a mask: And he who can calmly hear, and digest such doctrine, hath forfeited his claim to rationality an apostate from the order of manhood; and ought to be considered as one, who hath not only given up the proper dignity of man, but sunk himself beneath the rank of animals, and contemptibly crawl through the world like a worm.†  (source) Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Lolla-Wossiky was so contemptible it made Hooch sick.  (source) Orson Scott Card, Red Prophet, 1988

Sometimes he was contemptibly childish.†  (source) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902

The fear and despair they had felt a moment earlier were drowned in their rage against this vile, contemptible act.  (source) George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945

Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing.†  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Nothing would have been more nonsensical and, above all, more pointless and contemptible.  (source) Franz Kafka, The Trial, 1925

But is that essentially right, and proper, and honourable, or is it contemptibly mean and selfish?†  (source) Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 1895

Stupid, hypocritical, cruel--oh, contemptible!  (source) E. M. Forster, Howards End, 1910

The disturbance was as the first floating weed to Columbus—the contemptibly little suggesting possibilities of the infinitely great.†  (source) Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874