28 April 2014

contemn

[kuhn-tem]

verb (used with object)

– to treat or regard with disdain, scorn, or contempt. ‘He dismissed her with contemn’.

Origin:
1375–1425; late Middle English contempnen (< Middle French ) < Latin contemnere to despise, scorn, equivalent to con- con- + temnere to slight; see contempt

Related forms
con·temn·er [kuhn-tem-er, -tem-ner], con·tem·nor [kuhn-tem-ner], noun
con·tem·ni·ble [kuhn-tem-nuh-buhl], adjective
con·tem·ni·bly, adverb
con·temn·ing·ly, adverb
pre·con·temn, verb (used with object)

Can be confused: condemn, contemn.

Synonyms
scorn, disdain, despise.

Today’s aphorism

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

– Marcus Tullius Cicero

On this day

28 April 1789 – Mutiny on the ‘Bounty’. Lieutenant Bligh and 18 of his crew from the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty, are set afloat in an open boat following a mutiny led by Christian Fletcher. After 47 days Bligh landed the boat on Timor, in the Dutch East Indies. The mutineers settled on Pitcairn Island and in Tahiti. In 1856, the British Government granted Norfolk Island to the Pitcairners because population growth had outgrown the small island.

28 April 1926 – birth of Harper Lee, American author. Harper wrote the iconic ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, which detailed the racism that she witnessed as she grew up in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.

28 April 1945 – Italians execute former dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci.

28 April 1996 – Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, when Martin Bryant shoots 35 people dead. He is currently serving a life sentence for the murders.