What's the difference between contempt and scoff?

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.

Scoff


Definition:

  • (n.) Derision; ridicule; mockery; derisive or mocking expression of scorn, contempt, or reproach.
  • (n.) An object of scorn, mockery, or derision.
  • (n.) To show insolent ridicule or mockery; to manifest contempt by derisive acts or language; -- often with at.
  • (v. t.) To treat or address with derision; to assail scornfully; to mock at.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lunchtime read: How banter conquered Britain Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Guardian Design Team There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, you can eat at restaurants called Scoff & Banter or buy an “Archbishop of Banterbury” T-shirt for £9.99.
  • (2) Mere hypothecation, scoff politicians, rejecting the idea again in parliament yesterday.
  • (3) And does Ofsted really expect to get away with using the “kids today!” scoff as an actual, presentable-to-parliament reason for these embarrassingly high youth unemployment rates?
  • (4) Russia continues to scoff at evidence that Syrian government forces carried out the chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun earlier this week.
  • (5) Brooks worries that part of the problem with society is that we have become conditioned to scoff the marshmallow.
  • (6) Penny Wong scoffs at 'entertaining but erratic' Barnaby Joyce leading National party Read more The governor of the Reserve Bank Glenn Stevens said at the time there were “few things less likely than Australia defaulting on its sovereign debt”.
  • (7) Rolf scoffs at those who say the Fight for 15, which the SEIU has underwritten, has failed at its goals of unionizing McDonald’s and getting it to adopt a $15 minimum.
  • (8) Clegg will insist that the Lib Dems have already replaced Labour as the country's leading "progressive" party and scoff at Tory pretensions to the same label.
  • (9) Heavily bandaged and unable to walk, she scoffs at the US ambassador's talk of a thorough investigation of the Ahuas raid.
  • (10) Rodgers scoffs at papers from US military colleges branding them a strategic threat and a Honduran government claim linking maras to al-Qaida.
  • (11) Although, of course, the easiest thing would simply to be British about all this and scoff.
  • (12) The Castrol Index, for the mercifully uninitiated, is of course the nonsense ranking scheme cooked up by some bods at Fifa's Castle Greyskull to give people even more of a reason to scoff at them, which is always grand.
  • (13) "You can't scoff at sewing and it's practicality," asserts Dave Montez.
  • (14) Sceptics may scoff, and results of an attempt to extract DNA and match it to descendants are not due until Christmas, but Thompson is adamant that the bones now resting in a safe in the archaeology and ancient history department of Leicester University are those of the last Plantagenet, Richard III , who rode out of Leicester on the morning of 22 August 1485 a king, and came back a naked corpse slung over the pommel of a horse.
  • (15) Presented with official estimates of how many immigrants are in the country illegally, a common response is to scoff.
  • (16) Morrissey scoffs at Vanessa Redgrave's celebrity humanitarianism in his autobiography.
  • (17) I used to scoff at the simplicity of equating onscreen violence with its real-world equivalent.
  • (18) Liberals may scoff, pundits may shake their heads, but Palin herself clearly still wants some form of political life.
  • (19) His opposite number scoffs at the forecasts and promises his tweaks would be far superior.
  • (20) Some might call such a day 'The Millennium', but America shies away from the socialist solution, while the rest of the world scoffs but votes with its wallets to adopt our culture.