scorn

Verb from Middle English scornen, schornen, alteration of Old French escharnir, from Vulgar Latin escarnire, from Proto-Germanic *skarnjan (perhaps related to *skarną (“dung, filth”)). Noun from Old French escarn (cognate with Portuguese escárnio, Spanish escarnio and Italian scherno).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /skɔːn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /skɔɹn/

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• Rhymes: -ɔː(r)n

scorn (third-person singular simple present scorns, present participle scorning, simple past and past participle scorned)

1. (transitive) To feel or display contempt or disdain for something or somebody; to despise.
   • C. J. Smith

     We scorn what is in itself contemptible or disgraceful.

2. (transitive) To reject, turn down.

   He scorned her romantic advances.

3. (transitive) To refuse to do something, as beneath oneself.

   She scorned to show weakness.

4. (intransitive) To scoff, to express contempt.
   • 1578–1579, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], “Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale. [...] Dedicated to the Right Honorable the Ladie Compton and Mountegle”, in Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. Whereof the Next Page Maketh Mention‎, London: Imprinted for William Ponsonbie, dwelling in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the Bishops head, published 1591, OCLC 84758486:

     For miſerie doth braueſt mindes abate, / And make them ſeeke for that they wont to ſcorne, / Of fortune and of hope at once forlorne.

• This is a catenative verb which takes the to infinitive. See Appendix:English catenative verbs

• (to feel contempt): see also Thesaurus:despise
• (to scoff): deride, mock, ridicule, scoff, sneer

scorn (countable and uncountable, plural scorns)

1. (uncountable) Contempt or disdain.
2. (countable) A display of disdain; a slight.
   • Dryden

     Every sullen frown and bitter scorn / But fanned the fuel that too fast did burn.

3. (countable) An object of disdain, contempt, or derision.
   • Bible, Psalms xliv. 13

     Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us.

• Scorn is often used in the phrases pour scorn on and heap scorn on.

• circa 1605: The cry is still 'They come': our castle's strength / Will laugh a siege to scorn — William Shakespeare, Macbeth
• 1967, Rain of tears, real, mist of imagined scorn — John Berryman, Berryman's Sonnets. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

• See also Thesaurus:contempt

• scornful

• Crons, corns