DESPISE

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (verb)

Verb forms

Present simple: I / you / we / they despise ... he / she / it despises

Past simple: despised

Past participle: despised

-ing form: despising

Sense 1

Meaning:

Look down on with disdain

Example:

The professor scorns the students who don't catch on immediately

Synonyms:

contemn; despise; disdain; scorn

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Hypernyms (to "despise" is one way to...):

detest; hate (dislike intensely; feel antipathy or aversion towards)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "despise"):

look down on (regard with contempt)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

Sam cannot despise Sue

Derivation:

despisal; despising (a feeling of scornful hatred)

Credits

Context examples:

I could see that she hated me and feared me, and when the thought of it drove me to drink, then she despised me as well.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You fought and ruled the gang, not because you liked to,—you know you really despised it,—but because the other fellows patted you on the shoulder.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

They are despised and hated by all sorts of people.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

She had despised him, and loved another; and he had been very much aware that it was so.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Her folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all exposed to him, and he must despise her forever.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

They did not despise him.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

There was an offensive tone in it, perhaps, and yet in the main it struck me as mere riotous outcry, the noisy reception of one who amused and interested them, rather than of one they disliked or despised.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

From his wife's account of him she could discern Mr Smith to have been a man of warm feelings, easy temper, careless habits, and not strong understanding, much more amiable than his friend, and very unlike him, led by him, and probably despised by him.