All 8 Uses of
contempt
in
Light in August
- And Byron watched him standing there and looking at the men in sweatstained overalls, with a cigarette in one side of his mouth and his face darkly and contemptuously still, drawn down a little on one side because of the smoke.†
Chpt 2 *contemptuously = with disrespect
- Because before the act was completed the man, without changing his indolent and contemptuous attitude, turned his face and looked once at the proffered pail through the drooping smoke of the cigarette.†
Chpt 2contemptuous = showing a lack of respect
- He took it, holding it on his palm, cold, contemptuously.†
Chpt 8contemptuously = with disrespect
- Her hands are on her hips and she watches the younger woman with an expression of cold and impersonal contempt.†
Chpt 1
- The others had not stopped work, yet there was not a man in the shed who was not again watching the stranger in his soiled city clothes, with his dark, insufferable face and his whole air of cold and quiet contempt.†
Chpt 2
- It was as though some enemy upon whom he had wreaked his utmost of violence and contumely stood, unscathed and unscathed, and contemplated him with a musing and insufferable contempt.†
Chpt 11
- Yet on the first time that he deliberately looked again toward the house, he felt a shocking surge and fall of blood; then he knew that he had been afraid all the time that she would be in sight, that she had been watching him all the while with that perspicuous and still contempt; he felt a sensation of sweating, of having surmounted an ordeal.†
Chpt 11
- He spoke with a different voice, almost in different words, as though he dwelled by ordinary among different surroundings and in a different world; crouching beside the bed the child could feel the man fill the room with rude health and unconscious contempt, he too as helpless and frustrated as they.†
Chpt 20
Definitions:
-
(1)
(contempt as in: feels contempt towards her) lack of respect for someone or something thought inferior -- often accompanied by a feeling of dislike or disgustA famous saying, "familiarity breeds contempt" comes from Aesop's fable, "The Fox and the Lion". (6th century BC)
When first the Fox saw the Lion he was terribly frightened, and ran away and hid himself in the wood. Next time however he came near the King of Beasts he stopped at a safe distance and watched him pass by. The third time they came near one another the Fox went straight up to the Lion and passed the time of day with him, asking him how his family were, and when he should have the pleasure of seeing him again; then turning his tail, he parted from the Lion without much ceremony.
The moral is traditionally, "Familiarity breeds contempt"; though an alternative moral is "Acquaintance softens prejudices." -
(2)
(contempt as in: held in contempt of court) the crime of willful disobedience to or disrespect for the authority of a court or legislative bodyFormally, this is called "contempt of court," but it is often shortened as just "contempt."