All 3 Uses of
contemptible
in
Don Quixote
- I do not mean that they ought to leave them to make a choice of what is contemptible and bad, but that they should place before them what is good and then allow them to make a good choice as they please.†
Chpt 1.51-52 *contemptible = deserving no respect (worthless or of bad quality)
- The great poet who sang her beauty, the famous Ariosto, not caring to sing her adventures after her contemptible surrender (which probably were not over and above creditable), dropped her where he says: How she received the sceptre of Cathay, Some bard of defter quill may sing some day; and this was no doubt a kind of prophecy, for poets are also called vates, that is to say diviners; and its truth was made plain; for since then a famous Andalusian poet has lamented and sung her tears, and another famous and rare poet, a Castilian, has sung her beauty.†
Chpt 2.1-2
- Of all these qualities, great and small, is a true knight-errant made up; judge then, SeƱor Don Lorenzo, whether it be a contemptible science which the knight who studies and professes it has to learn, and whether it may not compare with the very loftiest that are taught in the schools.†
Chpt 2.17-18
Definition:
very bad (deserving no respect)