(v. t.) To esteem worthy; to consider worth notice; -- opposed to disdain.
(v. t.) To condescend to give or bestow; to stoop to furnish; to vouchsafe; to allow; to grant.
(v. i.) To think worthy; to vouchsafe; to condescend; - - followed by an infinitive.
Example Sentences:
(1) After much personal experimentation and endurance of catcalls from the ignorant circles in which I deign to mix, I can exclusively reveal that the answer is two, and best to go for one normal vest and one sportsback to emphasise your exciting double-vest action.
(2) Although Kabila appeared "quick and charming" - when he deigned to turn up - he was usually engaging in conspiratorial politics in Dar es Salaam, or negotiating with China's Chou En-lai or North Korea's Kim il-Sung.
(3) O'Brien did not attend this morning's meeting in Dublin, which is the first in a series of EGMs deigned to pave the way for a restructuring at INM .
(4) When he finally deigned to sit down formally, it was in typically theatrical fashion: after midnight, on a big bed in a five-star suite, the Monte Carlo casino winking beneath our balcony, the ocean sighing behind us.
(5) The clearance falls to Shaw, who trundles forward until someone deigns to close him down, which is quite a while.
(6) I love cats more than dogs, but the reason I love cats is because a cat would never deign to appear on an idiotic digital channel obedience programme.
(7) He could, for example, have cited the passage in English History 1914-45 where AJP Taylor (quite possibly one of those lefty historians whom Gove indicts but doesn't deign to name) recalled what happened on the afternoon of 5 August 1914 when prime minister Asquith called a council of war.
(8) This goes double for the occasions upon which he deigns to talk sense.
(9) In effect it is arguing for Greek pensioners and poorer wage earners to make further economies,” he continued, conceding that Athens had proposed a primary surplus target of 2.5% which neither the EU nor IMF had deigned to consider.
(10) Eventually, Schiavo pointed me in the direction of Fuld's lawyer, a former president of the New York Bar Association named Patricia Hynes – who, predictably enough, did not deign to reply to either phone calls or emails.
(11) In the end, writing about what you know – that hoary and potentially limiting, even stultifying piece of advice – might be best seen as applying to the type of story you're thinking of writing rather than to the details of what happens within it and perhaps, with that in mind, a better precept might be to write about what you love, rather than what you have a degree of contempt for but will deign to lower yourself to, just to show the rest of us how it's done.
(12) Here was an Etonian prime minister, asking for a licence for business as usual from those whom he deigns to rule over.
(13) He also deigned to offer advice to women affronted by non-consensual sexual advances.
(14) (Without, of course, deigning to read a word I've written).
(15) The genocide of Native Americans, the Atlantic Slave trade of Africans, the conquest of Mexicans, the colonization of Filipinos and Hawaiians, the mass importation of Chinese workers subsequently denied citizenship under the Chinese Exclusion Act : the War Machine created and then expanded the size of the United States using non-white bodies, waging war against them, and making them second-class citizens ( when it deigned to make them citizens at all ).
(16) But in a town where women fare so poorly on both the business and entertainment side, it seems like Hollywood should learn a thing or two about how best to describe the women who deign to stay – and succeed – despite the obstacles.
(17) "I cannot for the life of me understand how intelligent, sophisticated folk in the Conservative party think it is defensible in the 21st century to have a system that ends up with hundreds of MPs with jobs for life – and they do not even deign to get 50% of the vote every few years."
(18) Radical stuff, that: his Conservative, Labour and Independent opponents haven't yet deigned to put anything in the mail, but a quick check of their online profiles shows an abundance of similar bromides.
(19) Now that he’s finally deigning to let us hear one, it will be intriguing to find out if James’s music still sounds as alien and ahead-of-the-curve as it did in the 90s.
(20) In Curriculum Vitae, her purse-lipped autobiography of 1992 - a book as curious for the many tales it does not deign to tell as for those it does - she encourages readers to see her childhood as economically straitened but content.