Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Contumely   Listen
Contumely

noun
1.
A rude expression intended to offend or hurt.  Synonyms: abuse, insult, revilement, vilification.  "They yelled insults at the visiting team"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Contumely" Quotes from Famous Books



... overtopping the Alps, were to be beaten down to a level—strong interest, connected by a thousand links, severed—new habits formed; Every house, and almost every individual, in a greater or less degree, reclaimed. Derision and contumely were busy in crushing this sublime project in its birth—coldness and apathy encompassed it on every side—but our predecessor, nevertheless, went boldly forward with a giant's strength and more than a giant's heart—conscious of difficulties and perils, though not disheartened, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... think it an honour to acquire a Villiers to the holy empire, and would give him such principalities as he might choose from his domains. The fair Imperia replied that she was extremely obliged to the Emperor, but that had she to suffer contumely upon contumely in France, she still intended there to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... above the house with his dogs, and sent down his servant to ask a bit of bread from the goodwife for his greyhounds, with instructions what to do if he met with a denial. Accordingly, when the witch had refused the boon with contumely, the servant, as his master had directed, laid above the door a paper which he had given him, containing, amongst many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... the shoulder of any substantial employer and say, 'Do you wish to rectify yourself on this thing called "patriotism?"' Do you wish to give the soldier back his job who presents to you a meritorious case? We give you a chance. If you do not take it we will publish this thing and you will go down to contumely ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat

... sorrows, how much of cruel disappointment and heart-cankering delay, how often-times unwritten tragedies are hidden in that thoughtless little phrase! O, the mass of blighted hopes, of slighted affections, of cold neglect, and foolish contumely, wrapped up in those three syllables! Kind heart, kind heart, never use them; neither lightly as in scorn, nor sadly as in pity: spare that ungenerous reproach. What! canst thou think that from a feminine breast the lover, the wife, the mother, can be utterly sponged away without long years of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... his soul's sake. Had he not wished to marry Linda himself, it might be very well that Linda should marry a young man. But now that Linda so openly scorned him, had treated him with such plain-spoken contumely, he thought it would be well that Linda should be crushed. Yes; and he thought also that he might probably find a means of ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... visitors arrive upon the scene, so bad pictures yield to better works of art, and quit the walls of galleries and saloons to take refuge in servants' bedrooms, back attics, and stable lofts; suffering much neglect and contumely in comparison with their former ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... his proffers of peace rejected by England with contumely and scorn, and declined by Austria, now prepared, with his wonted energy, to repel the assaults of the allies. As he sat in his cabinet at the Tuileries, the thunders of their unrelenting onset came rolling in upon his ear from all the frontiers of France. ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... food as dangerous to come by as bear's venison, father," answered Rose, bitterly, still on fire with the idea that the monk treated her nation with suspicion and contumely. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... insurrectionary movement it is now perhaps impossible to ascertain. The popular voice at Havana pronounced him its leader and projector, and as such he was condemned. His own bitter wrongs; the terrible recollections of his life of servitude; the sad condition of his relatives and race, exposed to scorn, contumely, and the heavy hand of violence; the impunity with which the most dreadful outrages upon the persons of slaves were inflicted,—acting upon a mind fully capable of appreciating the beauty and dignity of freedom,— ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... by inveterate enemies, who treated her with every mark of contumely; browbeaten and overawed by men of superior rank, and men invested with the ensigns of a sacred character, which she had been accustomed to revere, felt her spirit at last subdued; and those visionary dreams ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... patriotism, and the masses who reap the reward of his labors frequently permit him, without any particular fault upon his part, to live and die in his old age with disrespect. Witness the punishment inflicted on Socrates, on our Saviour, and many others for no crime whatever. But this contumely and disrespect ought not to deter a good and qualified man from entering the public service, if he is satisfied that the good of the country ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... resolution. Said I: 'This lofty gentleman would cheat me, his neighbor, who have suffered all the contumely of this good society, and on starveling opportunity have slowly recovered independence. Now he shall take my place in the forest, or I will wear my hat at the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... mingle, and which will regard even me as—no matter what!—it shall not scorn me as your bride. I will not bring shame and reproach upon you. Oh! if for me, dear Luke, the proud ones of the earth were to treat you with contumely, this heart would break with agony. For myself, I have pride sufficient—perchance too much. Perchance 'tis pride that actuates me now. I know not. But for you I am all weakness. As you were heretofore, I would have been to you the tenderest ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... representative to go, and the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive any of them. As usual, they played into his hands. Hans bleibt immer Hans, and on this occasion his vulgar hack of good manners only brought contumely upon the whole Reichstag, and left the Emperor as the outstanding dignified figure in the controversy. Such behavior is not calculated to invite confidence, and not likely to induce this enemy-surrounded nation to put its destinies in such hands, not at any ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... mortgagees. And thus it came about that these ladies of gentle birth, friends from childhood, had to work like servants in the fields, the vineyard, and the house; they had to take lodgers, and wait on them; and worse than all this, to listen to words of insult and contumely, and that from others besides the clergy, who, under the Papal rule, were absolute masters in the town. For at that time few paid any tribute of respect to the wives of the men who had made sacrifices for their ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... a man may build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing everyone in his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. But this kind of humility is rendered especially difficult in these days, by the contumely thrown on men in humble employments. The very removal of the massy bars which once separated one class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold more shameful in foolish people's, i.e., in most people's ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... and so much shame, As each strive which is greater: But, believe me, I suck'd not in this patience with my milk. Do not presume, because you see me young, Or cast despights on my profession For the civility and tameness of it. A good man bears a contumely worse Than he would do an injury. Proceed not To my offence: wrong is not still successful, Indeed it is not: I would approach your Kins-woman With all respect, done to your ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... of more than half a lifetime, but as a foreign being, an unknown quantity, a worshipper of graven images, a participant in blasphemous rites, a believer, in short, in just all that which sound, respectable, and godly British common sense cast forth, with scorn and contumely, close on four centuries back. He was frightened. His everyday, comfortable, jog-trot, little odd and end of a local parochial suburban middle-class world was literally turned upside down and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... the hand of friendship, who pine in unheeded obscurity, suffering the daily privations of life's indispensable requisites, or obtaining a scanty pittance at the will of opulent ignorance, and under the humiliating contumely, as we have just been informed, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... exclaimed the lady, "to run away from my house in this fashion, and treat me with such contumely, and then to order me to send her her fine clothes to deck herself for ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... comfort and sympathy, and it is but due to that little man to say that anything he could have done for his benefactor would have given him the greatest delight. He spent much of his spare time in devising means for his rescue, all of which the old man listened to with impatience and rejected with contumely. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... that I had returned under the impression that my presence was desired by Cynthia, and that I must protest with all my power against the treatment I had received. I had been arrested and imprisoned with much violence and contumely, without having had any opportunity of hearing what my offence was supposed to have been, or having had any semblance of a trial, and that I could not consider that my usage had been consistent with the theory of courtesy, order, or justice ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Further, to be treated with contempt is to be defective. But the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 8) that "those who are disposed to contumely are pitiless." Therefore the reason for taking pity, is not a defect in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... when I spoke of them." Here the poor mother sobbed, almost overcome by the contumely of the expression used ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... and set. I felt a brute; but what was I to do? For the sake of every one concerned, I couldn't have the L.C.P. exposed, or be exposed myself, and the trip broken up at the last, in contumely for all. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... myself agreeable and acceptable to Miss Panton, and if it were equally in my will and in my power, yet I should never be, in the language of the market, one shilling the better for her. Her father, a man of low birth, and having, perhaps, in spite of his wealth, suffered from the proud man's contumely, has determined to ennoble his family by means of his only child, and she is not to enjoy his fortune unless she marry one who has a title. If she unites herself with any man, below the rank of a baron's son, he swears she shall ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... only afraid to accompany him, but even to own or salute him, for some of them had lost their honours for doing it, some their estates, and all of them were threatened. The noble structures which he had begun were given over by the workmen, the good deeds requited with contumely, the honours he had conferred with infamy and disgrace. For many persons, who in the day of his authority had loaded him with presents, required them again in his distress, pretending they were but loans and no more. Those who before had cried ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... prove," said Mr. Belamour, when the greetings had passed. "I have discovered how our fugitive passed the early part of the Sunday;" and he related how he had elicited from the Mistresses Treforth that they had seen her and driven her away with contumely. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Therefore, Terry's accusation was the acme of insult and contumely, which a Southerner's imagination could devise. Broderick read it in a morning paper as he breakfasted with friends in the International Hotel and, wounded by the thrust from one he deemed ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... is a point of honor for the successive classes to treat each other with contumely. The feud between freshman and sophomore goes on automatically. Only when one has become a senior may he, without losing caste, recognize a freshman as a youth of promise, and admit that a sophomore is not half bad. Such disinterested criticism is tolerated because it is evidently the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... single remarkable event to amaze the reader; no tragical scene to convulse the heart, or pathetic narrative to draw tears from sympathetic eyes. All I wish to delineate is, the progressive steps of a poor man, advancing from indigence to ease; from oppression to freedom; from obscurity and contumely to some degree of consequence—not by virtue of any freaks of fortune, but by the gradual operation of sobriety, honesty, and emigration. These are the limited fields, through which I love to wander; sure to find in some parts, the smile of new-born happiness, the glad heart, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... anguish as yet untried! For what new tortures am I still reserved? All I have undergone, transports of passion, Longings and fears, the horrors of remorse, The shame of being spurn'd with contumely, Were feeble foretastes of my present torments. They love each other! By what secret charm Have they deceived me? Where, and when, and how Met they? You knew it all. Why was I cozen'd? You never told me of those stolen hours Of amorous converse. Have they oft been seen Talking ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... Brought me here on a trumped-up story of relationship with the Bishop of Benares, to insult me! Oh, what would that godly man say if he heard of it!—And he shall hear of it, believe me! Your infamy shall be spread abroad! So this is your revenge, sir—[he turns to the VICAR]—your revenge for the contumely with which I have very properly treated you, sir! Now I understand why I was made to sit down and eat sausages with a butler—yes, sir, with a butler and a common working-man! Oh! I could die with shame! You have bereft me of all words! You . . . You . . . You ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... "and unworthy the name of a true and loyal knight, how darest thou do this insult and contumely to an enemy, who, though fallen, is yet thine equal? I will make thee rue this foul despite, and avenge the wrongs of my brethren of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... to support him. The contract to hunt the country had been made with him in last March, and was good for one year. Having the kennels and the hounds under his command he did hunt the country; but he did so amidst a storm of contumely and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... this one purpose, enduring the occasional short-comings of his agents with that forbearance which springs from a care for the enterprise in hand, so deep as to control private vexation (the very same motive which made Columbus bear so mildly with insult and contumely from his followers),—such a man is worthy to be put in comparison with the other great discoverer who worked out his enterprise through poverty, neglect, sore travail, and the vicissitudes of courts. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... would give drunkenness a vile name, call it doting by wine. Now doting is to use vain and trifling discourse; and when such babbling is accompanied by wine, it usually ends in most disagreeable and rude contumely and reproach. It is a good custom therefore of our women, who in their feasts called Agrionia seek after Bacchus as if he were run away, but in a little time give over the search, and cry that he is fled to the Muses and lurks with them; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... to dream:—ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... honest enough—that is, to an ordinary competence in all these. But now your turn is to hear what your own hand hath earned ye, that when you suffered this nameless hangman to cast into public such a despiteful contumely upon a name and person deserving of the Church and State equally to yourself, and one who hath done more to the present advancement of your own tribe than you or many of them have done for themselves, you forgot to ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... the Southern public; we must leave it to them to disabuse that public of its prejudices. But in the mean time, for my own part, I shall continue to act justly, whether those towards whom justice is exercised receive it with candor or with contumely. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... was the most impressive I ever attended. Aaron and I had spoken, Charles Remond followed, picturing the contumely and opprobrium everywhere heaped upon the black man and all identified with him, the ostracism from social circles, etc. At the climax he exclaimed: "I have a fond and loving mother, as true and noble a woman as God ever made; but whenever she thinks of her absent son, it is that he is an ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... lived life to its fullest, and paid the penalty with shortened years. He expressed himself without reserve—being emancipated from superstition and precedent. And the man who is not dominated by the fetish of custom is marked for contumely by the many. Custom makes law, and the one who violates custom is "bad." Yet all respectable people are not good; and all good people are not respectable. If you do not know this you are ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... In his absence he was accused of treason, and was convicted on evidence which would not have satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was condemned to death: his honours and lands were declared forfeit: his arms were torn with contumely out of the Heralds' book; and his domains swelled the estate of the cruel and rapacious Perth. The fugitive meanwhile, with characteristic wariness, lived quietly on the Continent, and discountenanced the unhappy projects ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... held by the Egyptians in the greatest contempt, and they do all they can to vilify him. The colour red being associated with him, they treat with contumely all those who have a ruddy complexion; the ass[FN324] being usually of a reddish colour, the men of Koptos are in the habit of sacrificing asses by casting them down precipices. The inhabitants of ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge

... Army was still regarded as something of a nuisance by the majority of educated people, a good thing for the very worst by a few, with indifference or hostility by the mass. To wear the uniform was to bring upon one contumely, often persecution. Salvation Army officers were sometimes perhaps ill fed and poorly clad; nevertheless, because of the opportunity their position afforded to seek and find the lost, Kate Lee counted herself blessed above millions when she sewed ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... treated his grandmother with deference which left her no room for complaint, could not force himself to assume his wonted air of affection; his love for her had waned from the hour he listened to the unjust accusation, the reproaches, the contumely she had heaped upon the innocent and unfortunate orphan placed at her mercy. The softening veil had fallen from her character, and disclosed its harsh, proud selfishness and policy. He now knew that she had offered her ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... hesitate to pit himself against men who were regarded as the most eminent painters and critics of France; and although (even as in the Dreyfus case) the only immediate result of his campaign was to bring him hatred and contumely, time, which always has its revenges, has long since shown how right he was in forecasting the ultimate victory of Manet and his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... Charles V. with having lent himself, as a docile instrument, to the intolerant devices of the clergy. Charles was never the sincere friend of the court of Rome. On the contrary, no Christian monarch ever treated that court with greater contumely, or in a manner more hostile and effectively prejudicial to its prosperity and influence. The war which he made against the Pope, and which terminated by the invasion of Rome itself, involved that court in ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... to keep her. And she had announced her own feelings in the matter! She was in the Noda—the girl who had stepped out of his life never to enter it again, so he had feared in his lonely ponderings. He was in the mood of a real man at last! He was resolved to take no more of Echford Flagg's contumely. He was heartsick at the thought of starting north and leaving her in the tavern, to be the object of attentions such as that cheap drummer man bestowed when he ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... I therefore prepared to descend the hill. My position as President of the Republic did demand a certain amount of personal dignity; and how was I to uphold that in my present circumstances? "Jack," said I, "it is the sign of a noble mind to bear contumely without petulance. Since our horses have gone before us, and Crasweller and the crowd have gone, we will follow them." Then I put my arm within his, and as I walked down the hill, I almost took joy in thinking ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... at by the congregation, she cowered in tears beneath his denunciations. In that seat she had to remain during the forenoon service. She returned home alone, and had to come back alone to her solitary seat in the afternoon. All day no one dared speak to her. She was as much an object of contumely as the thieves and smugglers whom, in the end of last century, it was the privilege of Feudal Bailie Wood (as he was called) to whip ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... El, Hea, the Great Goddess, the great gods, inflict upon him the utmost contumely, extirpate his ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... truth, that the bonds of natural affection can be broken by injustice and contumely; and it is yet more to be deplored, that when from such causes we loosen the ties habit and education have drawn around us, a reaction in our feelings commences; we seldom cease to love, but we begin to hate. Against ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... more. He found compensation for Elsje's contumely in his gun, and roved the forests through, and peeped from time to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... Dialogue on Dramatick Poetry: Howard, in his preface to the Duke of Lerma, animadverted on the vindication; and Dryden, in a preface to the Indian Emperor, replied to the animadversions with great asperity, and almost with contumely. The dedication to this play is dated the year in which the Annus Mirabilis was published. Here appears a strange inconsistency; but Langbaine affords some help, by relating that the answer to Howard was not ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the beginning. The student of history will readily perceive how they thus came into collision with the ruling powers. They were fined in Massachusetts and Connecticut for resistance to oppressive ecclesiastical laws, they were imprisoned in Virginia, and throughout the land were subjected to contumely and reproach. This dislike to the Baptists as a sect, or rather to their principles, was very naturally shared by the higher institutions ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... listen to me. Art seems to be having a bad time of it just now, or rather the devil seems to be very busy amongst our painters now-a-days, bravely setting them together by the ears. If you cannot make up your mind to put up with all sorts of annoyances, to endure more and more scorn and contumely in proportion as you advance in art, and as your fame spreads to meet with malicious scoundrels everywhere, who with a friendly face will force themselves upon you in order to ruin you the more surely afterwards,—if you cannot, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... 1611, says: 'I have written to Sir Horace Vere touching the English preacher at the Hague. We heard what he was that preceded, and we cannot be less cognisant what Mr. Ames is, for by a Latin printed book he hath laden the Church and State of England with a great deal of infamous contumely, so that if he were amongst us he would be so far from receiving preferment, that some exemplary punishment would be his reward. His Majesty had been advertised how this man is entertained and embraced at the Hague, and how he is a fit person ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... dethroned by the regent, Michael Palaeologus. When at length the imperial title was assumed by the latter, Baldwin thought it advisable to attempt negotiations with him. His ambassadors were received with open contumely; Michael would give the Latins nothing. "Tell your master," he said, "that if he be desirous of peace, he must pay me, as an annual tribute, the sum which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these terms I may allow him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... would hoot at a suspicion that he might admire anything so much as to make a good-looking doll in its praise. There is absolutely no image-making art in the practice of our people, except only this art of rags and contumely. Or, again, if the revenge taken upon a guy were that of anger for a certain cause, the destruction would not be the work of so thin an annual malice and of so ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... 7. King William, the statute of William III erected on College Green in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne. It was long the object of much contumely on the part of the Nationalists. It was blown to pieces in 1836, but ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... thus, because you know my soul Is fond of Belvidera. You perceive My life feeds on her, therefore thus you treat me Were I that thief, the doer of such wrongs As you upbraid me with, what hinders me But I might send her back to you with contumely, And court my fortune where she would ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... the front fighting against Serbia, might be dismissed as a folly on the part of the crowd if it were not so characteristic of the whole Magyar administration. The "subject nationalities" were to be enrolled in the Magyar host and treated, at the same time, with contumely. At Ver[vs]ac Dr. Slavko Mileti['c],[104] son of the famous patriot, was suspected not only of cherishing Serbian sympathies, which was natural, but of committing a felony. The authorities believed that in his medical capacity he ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... insisted upon her repeating the conversation over and over again. They then went immediately to the king, and narrated to him the whole affair. He, aware of the many efforts which had been made to traduce the character of Maria Antoinette, and to expose her to public contumely, was at once convinced that it was a treacherous plot of the cardinal in revenge ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... deck. Between anguish for Lucian's calamity and anguish for his father's contumely there poured from Julian's lips in hectoring questions to Ramsey a further anguish of chagrin for the seeming triumph of Hugh's love. Two or three challenges she parried and while in a single utterance he launched ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... whence we came, nor why; we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We only know we were not made in vain, we only know we were made for a wise purpose, and that all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contumely and unblest after all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not repine, let us trust. The humblest of us is cared for—oh, believe it!—and this fleeting stay is not ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... white labour more profitable, sold their sable brethren to their southern neighbours, and thus easily and profitably removed slavery from their borders,—for those, I say, to turn round and preach a crusade for the emancipation of the negro, in homilies of contumely, with the voice of self-righteousness, exhibits a degree of assurance that cannot be surpassed. Had they known as much of human nature as of the laws of profit and loss, they might have foreseen that in every epithet heaped upon their southern countrymen, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... treated them with radium for two days. These I shipped to the Catskills billed as hydrogen gas. Then, accompanied by two trustworthy assistants, I went to the sanatorium and preferred my demand for payment in person. I was ejected with contumely. Before my hasty exit, however, I had the satisfaction of noticing that the building was filled with patients. Languid ladies were seated in wicker chairs upon the piazzas, and frail anemic girls filled the corridors. It was a hospital ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... even inferior to the men, both physically and mentally. In appearance they are perfectly hideous, almost to deformity, and are the drudges of their lords; whom they repay for their contumely, by keeping in continual broils, during which their feminine voices are ever heard over the ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... his guide. He understands nothing of the solemn happenings which he has witnessed, nor does he ask their meaning, though his own heart had been lacerated with pain at sight of the king's sufferings. He is driven from the sanctuary with contumely. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... my daughter now!" It was the final ratification of the protest of her life against the "rights" that Law and Usage grant to technical paternity; rights that can only be abrogated or ignored by a child's actual parent—its mother—at the cost of insult and contumely from a world that worships its own folly and ignores its own gods. Sally was hers—her own—hard as the terms of her possession had been, and she had assigned a moiety of her rights in her to the ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... mind as were perhaps customary to her. Would there ever come a period to her misery, an hour of release in which she might be in comfort ere she died? Hitherto from one year to another, from one decade to the following, it had all been struggle and misery, contumely and contempt. She thought that she had done her duty by her child, and her child hated and despised her. It was but the other day that Arabella had openly declared that in the event of her marriage she would not have her mother as a guest in her own house. There ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... his hat and went to Doctor Prescott's. He wondered why he had been summoned there, and braced himself for almost anything in the way of contumely, but with no dread of it. The prospect of legitimate combat, where he could hit back, acted like a stimulant after his experience ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... employment. The brightness of a brave man's name makes shadows perceptible which might pass unmarked over a duller surface. Sobieski's delicate honor would have supposed itself sullied by enduring such contumely with toleration. But, as was said before, the male adjuncts of Miss Dundas had received so opportune a warning from an accidental knitting of the count's brow, they never after could muster temerity to sport ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... into her good graces again. Since my doings offended Amphitryon, and this love affair of mine lately occasioned his guiltless self some consternation, it is turn about now, and my guiltless self has to suffer for the scorn and contumely he heaped ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... to become; for, be assured, there will be suffering, which will dog your progress; aye, and the greater your talent, so much more will be jealousy of it, from those, at least, so on the alert to decry that which they cannot create; so much more will be contumely; so much more will be innuendoes which can not be met openly, as they certainly will not be in the slimy words and manner of utterance of bitter heartlessness, that is to say, if you be made of that stuff which presents to the world an artist, who is nothing ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred pages which had once been a beacon to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... pleasure not in learning, not exercising the mind, but in getting ahead of one's fellows. Under these two wholly masculine influences we have made the educational process a joy to the few who successfully attain, and a weary effort, with failure and contumely attached, to all the others. This may be a good method in sex-competition, but is wholly out of place and mischievous in education. Its prevalence shows the injurious masculization of ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... love, He listened not—though He could have done so—to the voices that at the end taunted Him with their proffered allegiance if He would come down from the Cross; because of that love, He gave up His spirit. And through all the weariness and contumely and pain, that love held His will fixed to its purpose, and bore Him over every hindrance that barred His path. Many waters quench it not. That love is stronger than death; mightier than all opposing powers; deep and great beyond all thought or thankfulness. It silences all praise. It beggars ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... those who followed—an honourable name surely, but in those days it was spoken contemptuously enough sometimes, by both the wise and the foolish, and Mr Hume, during the first years of his ministry in Nethermuir, had his share of contumely to meet or to ignore ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... to the supposed framer of the Gunpowder Plot only have been the accidental appropriation of an earlier term of popular reproach, and which had become so since the conversion of the nation to Christianity? This naturally heaped contumely and insult upon every thing relating to the Druids, and the heathen superstitions ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various

... everything else out of his head, and he entered the dirty little inn at her side with an air of joyful alacrity. In the happy kingdom of France the fortunate man who escorted a pretty woman, no matter where, needed not to fear ridicule or contumely, and was sure ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... incidents which were the delight of your youth. Yes! open wide that casket, ponder well, and with renewed fondness o'er these treasures of the mind, and believe me after such holy reflections you will feel yourself more able to meet the contumely of the world, and find yourself a ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... rejected, and in October, 1565, the Queen marched an army of eighteen thousand men against them from Edinburgh; their forces dispersed in face of superior numbers, and Murray, on seeking shelter in England, was received with contumely by Elizabeth, whose half-hearted help had failed to support his enterprise, and whose intercession for his return found at first no favor with the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... stone, amidst thy stricken and fated children; nurse of the desolate, that hidest in thy bosom the shame, the sorrows, the sins of many sons; in whose arms the fallen and the outcast shroud their distresses, and shelter from the proud man's contumely; Epitome and Focus of the disparities and maddening contrasts of this wrong world, that assemblest together in one great heap the woes, the joys, the elevations, the debasements of the various tribes of man; mightiest of levellers, confounding ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... less revolting than the disgustful meanness of to-day; besides, nothing is really known about the reasons for the suppression of the Templars. Men who forswear women are open to all contumely. Oh! the world is wondrous, just wondrous well ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... with the master-cook, Ruus showed so much disobedience, and raised the anger of his superior to such a pitch, that he received chastisement severely for his contumely. At this Ruus felt wroth; and, having previously placed a cauldron of water on the fire, and perceiving the water boiled, he seized, in the apparent frenzy of the moment, the master-cook by his ankle ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest.— Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... appointment to the viceroyalty, he found his government a nothing; a government faction superseding the governor, and an opposition faction engrossing the people. He now, for the first time, became a politician. He resolved to crush both, and he succeeded. He treated the government faction in Ireland with contumely, and he treated the opposition with contempt. Both were indignant; he laughed at both, and treated them with still more scorn. Both were astonished—the government faction intrigued against him in England, the opposition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... Christ came it was still in its vitality. Nay, as we saw, it is alive, or in a sort of mock life, among us at this very day. But even those who retained their imperfect belief had received into their canon a book which treated it with contumely and scorn, so irresistible was the lofty ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... the Americans treat the negro with contumely, they have a respect for the red Indian: a well-educated half-bred Indian is not debarred from entering into society; indeed, they are generally received with great attention. The daughter of a celebrated Indian chief brings heraldry into the family, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... the "cabinet regime." Upon the commissioners this chill gust from the North struck so disagreeably that, on January 2, they hastened home to their "independent nation." From this time forth the South covered Mr. Buchanan with contumely and abuse; Mr. Benjamin called him "a senile executive, under the sinister influence of insane counsels;" and the poor old man, really wishing to do right, but stripped of friends and of his familiar advisers, and confounded by ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... senses left him. And regaining consciousness, he felt a great pain, and leaving the combat fled in a northernly direction. And at this, the mighty car-warrior Arjuna and Uttara, both began to address him contumely." ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... content which constitute all the earthly enjoyment that remains to a heart that has once been happy. The late ungrateful, rebellious behaviour of his flock tended still more to circumscribe his pleasures; yet though the painful feelings of rejected kindness and undeserved contumely made his village walks and sacerdotal functions a penance instead of a gratification, he considered the probability of disappointment as no apology for relaxing his endeavours to do good. The morning and evening sacrifices were offered in the temple; the ignorant ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... toil—and conveniently forgot our horrible scare. We decried our officers—who had done nothing—and listened to the fascinating Donkin. His care for our rights, his disinterested concern for our dignity, were not discouraged by the invariable contumely of our words, by the disdain of our looks. Our contempt for him was unbounded—and we could not but listen with interest to that consummate artist. He told us we were good men—a "bloomin' condemned lot of good men." Who thanked us? Who took any notice of our ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... himself for the contumely he had suffered from Heliodora. As he spoke they were joined by the old man's daughter, who, after begging at many houses, returned with a pocketful of lentils. The girl had been pretty, but was now emaciated and fever-burnt; ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... yes; but it would try anybody to be doing the best he could, offering every kindness he could think of, only to have it rejected with contumely and . . . Oh, well, let it go; it's no matter—I'll talk to the doctor. Is that satisfactory, or are you going to break ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain

... Excellency, presented in the name of Quebec, not one was capable of understanding the nature of the question. In a dependence, such as Canada, was the government to be daily flouted, bearded, and treated with the utmost disrespect and contumely? "He" expected nothing less than that its patience would be exhausted, and energetic measures resorted to, as the only efficient ones. From any part of a people conquered from wretchedness into every indulgence, and the height of prosperity, such treatment, as the government ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger



Words linked to "Contumely" :   low blow, insult, disrespect, scurrility, contumelious, invective, abuse, vituperation, cut, discourtesy, stinger, billingsgate, vitriol



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org