Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Deserving of contempt; despicable.
- adj. Obsolete Contemptuous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Worthy of contempt; meriting scorn or disdain; despicable; mean: said of persons or things.
- Not worthy of consideration; inconsiderable; paltry; worthless: generally used with a negative.
- Held in contempt; despised; neglected.
- Contemptuous: as, to have a contemptible opinion of one.
- Synonyms Contemptible, Despicable, Paltry, Pitiful, abject, base, worthless, sorry, low. Contemptible is unworthy of notice, deserving of scorn, for littleness or meanness; it is generally not so strong as despicable, which always involves the idea of great baseness: as, a contemptible trick; despicable treachery. Paltry and pitiful are applied to things which from their insignificance hardly deserve to be considered at all: as, a paltry excuse; a sum of money pitifully small. In pitiful, the pity seems to apply to the one foolish enough to offer, etc., the pitiful tiling. Pitiful is often applied to persons. What is paltry is of no consequence; what is pitiful is absurdly unequal to what it should be. See pitiful.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Worthy of contempt; deserving of scorn or disdain; mean; vile; despicable.
- adj. Despised; scorned; neglected; abject.
- adj. obsolete Insolent; scornful; contemptuous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. deserving of contempt or scorn
Examples
“And how shortsighted and contemptible is the hypocrisy of those Hezbollah supporters who claim to stand for justice for the Palestinians while supporting such a murderous figure.”
The Huffington Post: Sam Sedaei: Ahmadinejad in Lebanon: A Love Story
“Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya were described as contemptible dogs by Gaddafi and Bashar al Assad.”
The Huffington Post: Nehad Ismail: Al Jazeera's Role in Toppling the Dictators One by One
“What I find contemptible is that outside Niall Fergeson (sp?) no one on the Right seems willing to openly admit that object.”
“With a man such as yourself every war, even the most contemptible, is possible.”
“A philosopher may pity and forgive the infirmities of female nature, from which he receives no real injury: but contemptible is the husband who feels, and yet endures, his own infamy in that of his wife.”
“The only thing is what do they call contemptible?”
“Craven and contemptible, that is what New York City Michael Bloomberg calls the suspected arsonist who set fire to the Memorial Park Chapel on Saturday.”
“The forum described as contemptible Popcru's efforts to smear the integrity of Fivaz and thus by implication that of every officer in the force.”
“With great elaboration and detail the fortunes of the king of the north, who is called contemptible, xi. 21, are described: how he desecrates the sanctuary, abolishes the sacrifice, cruelly persecutes the holy people, and prescribes idolatrous worship.”
“In politics, he has made the platform contemptible, which is a danger to the nation, needing the right use of platform; in literature -- well, we all know bourgeois, but who has done justice to the artist who gets on a platform to talk about the bourgeois?”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘contemptible’.
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@vcb.etym.prjct - SAT WORD DUMP - as ...
The words on this list SAT regulars that I haven't sorted and grouped yet. It's like my wordy holding pen. get it? holding the pen to write a word? HA! I love how lame my humor is.
iconoclast, glacial, agnostic, histrionic, treacly, contemptuous, captious, bombastic, bombast, perfidy, quiescence, sordid and 148 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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2nd part
prelude, ample, escalate, prototype, accession, acquisition, archives, zealot, indict, verdict, intimidating, timid and 454 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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andrew.simone's Words
elan, prestidigitation, flummoxed, autochthonous, missive, hoi polloi, schadenfreude, frou-frou, oolong, burleseque, ontic, etymology and 165 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Why We Curse: WTF?
This list collects the magnificent collection of vocabulary of the article "What the F***? Why We Curse," by Steven Pinker, in The New Republic (Oct. 2007). I think I'm more impressed with the coll...
curse, language, earthy, ancient, unthinkable, thinkable, emotional, rhyme, meter, alliteration, pleasure, metaphor and 196 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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Eazy E
motley, callous, languid, copious, dubious, contemptible, disparage, sporadic, gratuitous, disillusioned, conflagration, concordance and 99 more...
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justin's Words
braii, boerewors, lekker, viva, pap, lipodystrophy, lacticacidosis, sharp, chakalaka, defaulter, eish, oof and 256 more...
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Willieb's Words
pusillanimous, exigible, extraneous, contemptible, banal, generic, secular, canard, acerbic, erudite, versus, atheist and 192 more...
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2011 July
New words
correspondent, promulgate, transgress, trite, ravine, corespondent, contrivance, contrive, expedient, conducive, clairvoyance, difform and 184 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, C
cryptoxanthin, convent, calcar, chuckle, campanile, covet, complexion, campestral, chirography, counterscarp, caliginous, catabolism and 722 more...
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Another day, a whole nother list
rump, spot on, flank, outflank, rank, bedeck, leafhopper, apocope, academic, set-to, point of no return, cloy and 210 more...
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unpack your adjectives
and adverbs
walrusine, slipshod, bemused, inscrutable, bombastic, cattywampus, copacetic, famished, crackpot, flailsome, lugubrious, scalesome and 102 more...
Tweets
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