What's the difference between contempt and mirth?

Contempt


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of contemning or despising; the feeling with which one regards that which is esteemed mean, vile, or worthless; disdain; scorn.
  • (n.) The state of being despised; disgrace; shame.
  • (n.) An act or expression denoting contempt.
  • (n.) Disobedience of the rules, orders, or process of a court of justice, or of rules or orders of a legislative body; disorderly, contemptuous, or insolent language or behavior in presence of a court, tending to disturb its proceedings, or impair the respect due to its authority.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This "paradox of redistribution" was certainly observable in Britain, where Welfare retained its status as one of the 20th century's most exalted creations, even while those claiming benefits were treated with ever greater contempt.
  • (2) Refusing either to acquiesce in, or to rail at, Eliot's contempt for Jews, one strives to do justice to the many injustices Eliot does to Jews.
  • (3) But if it succeeds in getting a ban on the eight named phones, it could add the Galaxy S3 to the list through a more rapid "contempt proceeding" before the judge, according to legal experts.
  • (4) Yes, Goldsmith is to be held in contempt: a man of decency would have rejected this gutter strategy.
  • (5) "To prosecute someone for contempt of court is quite a serious step.
  • (6) Plagued by prison riots, IRA breakouts, illegal deportations, verdicts that found him in contempt of court, and over-hasty legislation on dogs, he acquired a reputation – as home secretaries often do – for being accident-prone.
  • (7) All the while, they are treated with a dismissiveness that borders on contempt.
  • (8) Perhaps monstering earns underdog sympathy, with contempt for the press as rife as contempt for conventional politics.
  • (9) Skylight review – Nighy and Mulligan in moving mixture of politics and love | Michael Billington Read more Commentators write glibly about the public’s increasing contempt for politicians, and yet what goes unremarked, and is equally damaging, is politicians’ growing contempt for us.
  • (10) A report on phone hacking published by the select committee on standards and privileges concluded hacking could be in contempt, "if it can be shown to have interfered with the work of the house or to have impeded or obstructed an MP from taking part in such work".
  • (11) Even the most “apolitical” of writers had found it difficult to conceal their contempt for the state of the country.
  • (12) Every detail of the dissolution honours betrayed contempt for the public.
  • (13) Above a fairly straightforward news story about the court’s decision to allow the country’s elected representatives a vote on the biggest constitutional upheaval in a generation, initially the headline read: “Yet again the elite show their contempt for Brexit voters!” Call me ‘remoaner-in-chief’, but I won’t be voting to trigger article 50 | Owen Smith Read more Launched within an hour of the verdict, the headline went on: “Supreme Court rules Theresa May CANNOT trigger Britain’s departure from the EU without MPs’ approval … as Remain campaigners gloat.” The copy itself provided little evidence of gloating.
  • (14) The government’s green paper on parliamentary privilege , published in 2012, said: [Parliament’s] power to punish non-members for contempt is untested in recent times.
  • (15) A move by the chancellor in the autumn statement to reverse the planned cuts to work allowances would send a strong message that the government’s welcome rhetoric is being backed by bold policy decisions.” The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said: “Theresa May and Philip Hammond have as much contempt for low income families as David Cameron and George Osborne ever did.
  • (16) I felt deeply grateful, but I also realised that my contempt for the non-hardcore readers – the softer core readers... not contempt, but my writing them off, had been premature.
  • (17) In a statement, the network added: "The crackdown on activists, being directly related to the anniversary, demonstrates contempt towards international human rights norms and insincerity in the government's own pledges and commitments to promote human rights in China ."
  • (18) Obstetrics was held in contempt by professionally educated and registered physicians and apothecaries, however, because of the immodesty and messiness of the work and the long hours involved.
  • (19) Return of Rebekah Brooks is 'two fingers up to British public' – shadow minister Read more “I am now standing up against those that sit back and treat us all with contempt – the Murdochs and Brooks of the world,” Hanna said in a two-minute video released on Friday.
  • (20) "We had the absurd position this week of even MPs in our democratically elected parliament being threatened with potential contempt of court by using their parliamentary privilege to name people.

Mirth


Definition:

  • (n.) Merriment; gayety accompanied with laughter; jollity.
  • (n.) That which causes merriment.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But the young Sontag could barely contain her mirth: "I just couldn't stop laughing," she says.
  • (2) She laughs raucously again, mirth appearing to be, incongruously, her way of acknowledging pain.
  • (3) Proving that laughter is infectious – and the best antidote – British actor Emma Watson showed Twitter solidarity with thousands of women who have posted mirthful pictures of themselves in defiance of a call by a Turkish politician for women to stop laughing in public.
  • (4) This was greeted with mirth in the courtroom but he was charged with insulting the president, an offence punishable by up to a year in prison.
  • (5) That, at least, is what many people have insisted from antiquity on – while prompting at the same time all kinds of counter-claims that other species share our expression of mirth (monkeys and, most recently, rats being the most common candidates, though there is one suggestion, in an ancient Jewish commentary, that for some reason Aristotle thought herons were laughers too).
  • (6) Anatomists may take an especial interest in the letters No 1903 to HERDER and No 1904 to CHARLOTTE v. STEIN (both dated the March 27, 1784) which demonstrate the discoverer's mirth in finding out the human os intermaxillare.
  • (7) Provoking MPs' schoolboy mirth at the hint of an innuendo to the female MP, the prime minister joked: "Maybe I should start all over again."
  • (8) My Twitter stream, largely metropolitan, explodes with mirth: this’ll take Farage down a peg or two!
  • (9) SEE YOU IN COURT There was much mirth on Twitter when judges in the ninth circuit court of appeals upheld a temporary restraining order on Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban on arrivals from seven Muslim-majority countries.
  • (10) An unfortunate camera angle left pundit Glenn Hoddle's tight trousers in full view, leading to endless mirth on Twitter.
  • (11) Herman Van Rompuy, a man whose very name seems to provoke mirth in anglocentric circles, is known for composing the occasional haiku .
  • (12) Humor measures assessed appreciation (including mirth, subjective ratings, and response sets), comprehension, and production, while competence measures included teacher ratings of classroom behavior, peer reputation, and achievement.
  • (13) He has a soft, almost hushed voice, glasses that press down on the tops of his ears, making them flop over like wings, and a frequent, mirthful smile.
  • (14) The news of Ramos’s remarks sparked mirth amongst the cybersecurity community, who began poking their own holes in the claims.
  • (15) The fact that this particular man has long been characterised as tremendously powerful only adds to the mirth.
  • (16) It is difficult to measure the effect of laughter and mirth on changing one's mindset, but in 12 months not a single instance of death of a child occurred resulting from diarrhea or malnutrition.
  • (17) A different order of difficulty across items, and a different profile of "mirth" responses to the items did, however, correlate with site of lesion.
  • (18) Gallingly, the elevation has also exposed him to the mirth of his old friend Richard Rogers , whose own life peerage he had previously enjoyed teasing.
  • (19) As Claudius said in Hamlet: “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.” Weddings, to me, feel heavy with expectation, pregnant with emotion, saturated with hope, fear and hard-to-keep promises.
  • (20) To detect changes in these components during a mirthful laughter experience, the authors studied 10 healthy male subjects.