Definition
showing contempt; scornful.
Pronunciation
US English
UK English
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Excerpts from News Articles
1
In asking for Mr Xu to be found guilty of contempt and fined S{$}20,000, the Attorney-General had argued that the TOC article and Facebook post did not constitute fair criticism, and that it was no defence that they merely reproduced the content of Ms O’Connor’s letter.
2
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron signed his controversial pension reform into law Saturday (Apr 15), prompting accusations from unions and the left he was showing " contempt " towards those behind a three-month protest movement.
3
In his 67-page decision Friday, Kacsmaryk demonstrated frustration, bordering on contempt , for the FDA process. He also revealed his abhorrence for abortion. In describing how mifepristone works, he said it “blocks the hormone progesterone, halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death.”
4
“During the period of African enslavement, our ancestors were given the duality of the Field Negro and the House Negro. The Field Negro labored from dawn ‘till dusk, had nothing but contempt for his white master, and most importantly, the majority of Black slaves, who were Field Negroes. In contemporary terms, what we would refer to as ‘the masses.
5
The case has already battered the reputation and credibility of Fox News, exposing the network as dishonest, having no regard for the most basic news ethics, and showing contempt for its sizable audience.
6
"There's so much contempt for elder sex. Even one of the models that I worked with said, 'Who wants to see all these?'" Minter recalled in a video call with CNN.
7
Trump stands accused of relatively minor crimes involving the payment of hush money to a former porn star. But there is a sense that these two men, so recently bound in mutual admiration of their bullying contempt for democratic norms and legal process, now find themselves in the clutches of the very systems of justice that they believed they could flout with impunity.
8
Trump hated international trade and opposed slashing entitlements, particularly social security and Medicare, which they have long tried to hobble and privatize. In 2018, he tweeted his contempt for the “Globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles … I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more.
9
In an effort to allow democracy to establish itself, the apartheid government and ANC agreed to avoid prosecutions; the violence the country witnessed when former president Jacob Zuma – facing a raft of corruption, fraud and money-laundering charges – was jailed for contempt of court may indicate why.
10
In 1980, when I was living in a bedsit and “gay” was a word still largely spoken between contemptuous inverted commas, a chanced-upon newspaper review alerted me to the existence of an unknown American writer whose third book had just made it to the UK. I can still remember the amount of nerve it took me to walk into the nearest bookshop and order it; I can still remember how, when it arrived two weeks later, this slim volume looked and felt like a missive from another world.
11
Dominic Raab could potentially face proceedings for contempt of court after high court judges ruled that he acted unlawfully by stopping prison and probation staff in England and Wales from recommending whether a prisoner was fit for release or transfer to open conditions.
12
But there is something about the ludicrousness of Musk that triggers the most childish responses. To watch Clayton grapple with him in the last-minute interview – Musk apparently gave the reporter a 20-minute heads up, not a controlling manoeuvre at all – is to witness an almost unmatchably awkward collision between reverence and contempt . The BBC, with its forelock-tugging “just happy to be here” energy (I don’t fault the reporter for this, by the way; there’s an argument that Clayton’s unthreatening demeanour extracted more from Musk than Emily Maitlis would have done), and Musk, working hard to get his reasonable-guy persona off the runway but coming across like a character from an Anthony Trollope novel.
13
The 46-year-old is serving sentences totalling 11-and-a-half years on charges including fraud and contempt of court, which human rights groups say were made up to silence him.
14
The same is true of lighter stories. How would an AI newsreader convey their contempt for a story about surfing dogs? Would they raise an eyebrow? Would they curl their lip and scowl? It worked for me. I went viral with that as well. Perhaps AI newsreaders won’t care about viewers’ reactions. As one rather cynical responder told me on Twitter: “The propaganda won’t be any different. I’d miss the chuckles though.”
15
Despite PPB facing oversight from the federal government due to claims of unconstitutional use of force, the US justice department has found that the police department has violated its own policies, and a judge found the city in contempt of his order to limit the use of teargas.
16
This has always been true of the Supreme Court — a reliable friend of property, capital and class rule throughout its 234-year history, occasional bouts of decency notwithstanding — but it has become an acute problem in this era of unchecked judicial supremacy. As the court arrogates more and greater power to itself, and grows both distant from and contemptuous of public opinion, it naturally attracts flatterers and intriguers.
17
A defendant who violates a gag order in New York can be held by a judge to be in criminal contempt , a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail. A judge will typically warn a defendant before issuing a contempt citation.
18
Navalny, who is serving combined sentences of 11-1/2 years for fraud and contempt of court on charges he says were trumped up to silence him, said via Twitter on Tuesday that he had been moved back into solitary confinement and forced to endure "extremely hellish" conditions.
19
“I don’t wish this moment on anyone,” Odeh told Al Jazeera. “You feel such humiliation and contempt . Watching our years-long efforts and work, our home being demolished, while you are stuck in a car with your hands cuffed.”
20
Navalny, who is serving combined sentences of 11.5 years for fraud and contempt of court, said via Twitter on Tuesday that he had been moved back into solitary confinement and forced to endure “extremely hellish” conditions.
21
Instead of arresting the woman, identified only as V.N. in documents filed in Pierce County Superior Court, the officer let her go and a local judge found her in contempt .
22
There is a huge difference between African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, and the rhetorical style that comes out of the Black pulpit. There are people who use AAVE and don’t speak in the cadence of the Black preacher, and there are Black people who employ the techniques of the Black preacher and don’t use AAVE. But it’s clear in the way Carlton conflates them, in the way he implies that King — King! — sounded like a sharecropper, that he harbors contempt for Black language and Black style.
23
But in 2020, he buckled like the gargantuan look-at-me team insignia attached to his belt. Snyder didn’t change the name out of some newfound respect for the Indigenous people he’d held in contempt .
24
A protester holds a placard depicting as late King Louis XIV that reads, Macron contemptuous of the Republic, during a rally in Paris. AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard
25
"The matter is active for the purposes of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 and the public are therefore advised to exercise caution if discussing it on social media."
26
Enter Ghost, though contemporary, is thoroughly infused with Palestine’s past—and thoroughly haunted by Sonia’s. Hammad, who is both a delicate writer and an exact one, intertwines the two, taking care to give Sonia as many personal ghosts as she does historical ones … Sonia notes, a little contemptuously , that ‘nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary.’ Hammad does not indulge in that illusion.
27
If men cannot dominate the literary landscape, cannot walk into lists like Granta’s, deservingly or not, they will look for other landscapes to colonise. If serious – and unserious – male novelists of stature are held in contempt , then why risk your reputation on something that pays as badly as writing fiction? The traditional dividends paid to literary talent, whether financial, reputational or sexual, no longer seem to exist for the male novelist. The incentive structure has decayed over time.
28
I care about her deeply. And I think all the time: no one would have contempt for a luxury brand man. They just wouldn’t.
29
In a study performed by American researcher Paul Ekman, participants from the West, insular African communities, and New Guinea were shown a collection of more than 10,000 portraits illustrating different facial expressions (a man frowning with a furrowed brow indicates anger; the same man frowning with downcast eyes indicates sadness). When 90 percent of participants, regardless of cultural background, identified the same emotions in the photos, Ekman concluded that there were at least seven universal facial expressions: anger, disgust, fear, surprise, happiness, sadness, and contempt .
30
Written the same year that he executed this painting, Umberto Boccioni’s Manifesto of Futurist Painters is full of active and aggressive words such as “fight,” “vicious,” and “ contempt .” This violence is also present in A Fight in the Arcade (or Riot in the Gallery), which shows a large group of upper-class people breaking out in hysteria in Milan’s most famous shopping arcade.
31
Second, both Lincoln and Darwin practiced the habit, at times exasperating to their admirers, of sympathetic summary. The ability to enter into an opponent’s argument without contempt or sarcastic bitterness was common to them both. Darwin did not merely articulate his opponents’ arguments against evolution; in every case he anticipated them and refuted them in advance. This is not merely instrumental, or a sign of softness—Lincoln went to war; Darwin annihilated a thousand years of biblical literalism—but it is a sign of sureness and part of the liberal inheritance.
32
This thought is echoed in the American sociologist and civil rights activist W E B DuBois’s concept of double consciousness. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), DuBois notes a common feeling: ‘this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity’.
33
Meanwhile, Fox hosts and executives were privately dismissive and even contemptuous of the Trump mouthpieces, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were making false claims about Dominion. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020. Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
34
The Tennessee House had expelled members only three times previously, according to a report from the state’s attorney general’s office. In 1866, six lawmakers were expelled “for the contempt of the authority of this House,” because they tried to prevent the state from granting citizenship to former enslaved people. In 1980, a member was expelled for seeking a bribe in exchange for tanking a piece of legislation. And in 2016, a representative was expelled amid state and federal investigations of sexual misconduct.
35
Kacsmaryk’s opinion (which the Justice Department appealed on Monday and moved to stay) displays the three telltale characteristics of Trump-appointed judges’ opinions: Contempt for the law, sleight of hand on the facts and partisan language more appropriate to a MAGA rally than a courtroom.