contemn

1. 1.

   look down on with disdain

   “He despises the people he has to work for”

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

   Synonymsdespisescorndisdain

   Broaderhate

   Narrowerlook down on

Other forms of contemn

past tense

contemned·

present participle

contemning·

third person

contemns·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about contemn

What does contemn mean?

contemn means "look down on with disdain".

How many syllables are in contemn?

contemn has 2 syllables: con-temn. The stress falls on "temn". In IPA it is /ˌkʌnˈtɛm/.

What is another word for contemn?

Close synonyms include despise, scorn, disdain. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is contemn a common word?

contemn is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.