All 12 Uses of
scorn
in
Moby Dick
- most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas.†
Chpt 7-9scorn = disrespect or reject as not good enough
- Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe.†
Chpt 16-18 *scorning = disrespecting or rejecting as not good enough
- Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, "I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir."†
Chpt 28-30scornful = full of strong disrespect or rejection
- Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage.†
Chpt 40-42overscorning = excessively disrespecting or rejectingstandard prefix: The prefix "over-" in overscorning means excessively. This is the same pattern as seen in words like overconfident, overemphasize, and overstimulate.
- They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and no prospective promise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.†
Chpt 46-48scorn = disrespect or reject as not good enough
- Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer.†
Chpt 52-54scornful = full of strong disrespect or rejection
- With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.†
Chpt 52-54scorn = disrespect or reject as not good enough
- out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.†
Chpt 94-96scornfully = in a disrespectful or rejecting manner
- I don't wonder he looked so scornful at me!†
Chpt 106-108scornful = full of strong disrespect or rejection
- The blows of the basement hammer every day grew more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother dived down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to flaxen curls!†
Chpt 112-114scorn = disrespect or reject as not good enough
- Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest.†
Chpt 121-123scornest = disrespect or reject as not valuable enoughstandard suffix: Today, the suffix "-est" is dropped, so that where they said "Thou lovest" in older English, today we say "You love."
- In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.†
Chpt 124-126scorn = disrespect or reject as not good enough