What's the difference between contempt and sympathy?

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.

Sympathy


Definition:

  • (n.) Feeling corresponding to that which another feels; the quality of being affected by the affection of another, with feelings correspondent in kind, if not in degree; fellow-feeling.
  • (n.) An agreement of affections or inclinations, or a conformity of natural temperament, which causes persons to be pleased, or in accord, with one another; as, there is perfect sympathy between them.
  • (n.) Kindness of feeling toward one who suffers; pity; commiseration; compassion.
  • (n.) The reciprocal influence exercised by the various organs or parts of the body on one another, as manifested in the transmission of a disease by unknown means from one organ to another quite remote, or in the influence exerted by a diseased condition of one part on another part or organ, as in the vomiting produced by a tumor of the brain.
  • (n.) That relation which exists between different persons by which one of them produces in the others a state or condition like that of himself. This is shown in the tendency to yawn which a person often feels on seeing another yawn, or the strong inclination to become hysteric experienced by many women on seeing another person suffering with hysteria.
  • (n.) A tendency of inanimate things to unite, or to act on each other; as, the sympathy between the loadstone and iron.
  • (n.) Similarity of function, use office, or the like.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Hulk Hogan’s status as a public figure, even one who holds forth often and at length about his sex life, may have kept him from getting the kind of sympathy that the subject of the escort story immediately received, but there’s no evidence Bollea intended for anyone to see the tape.
  • (2) Former Tory minister Edwina Currie has tweeted that she had "no sympathy" for food bank users, that they were just "opportunists".
  • (3) With Fury, I’m not going to have no remorse, I’m not going to have no sympathy.
  • (4) I have no quarrel with the overall thrust of Andrew Rawnsley's argument that the south-east is over-dominant in the UK economy and, as someone who has lived and worked both in Cardiff and Newcastle upon Tyne, I have sympathy with the claims of the north-east of England as well as Wales (" No wonder the coalition hasn't many friends in the north ", Comment).
  • (5) He added: “I have no sympathy for real paedophiles.
  • (6) But obviously if people have been injured or indeed killed that is a tragedy and our sympathies are with the victims and their families.” He added: “We never condone violence – whatever the cause.
  • (7) A Facebook page created for friends, family and well-wishers to write messages of sympathy was filling with tributes.
  • (8) Kafka's faceless and amoral heroes, on the other hand, inspire no sympathy at all.
  • (9) There was little sympathy from the Lib Dems' coalition partners in the Conservative party.
  • (10) A year after the establishment of the so-called caliphate by Islamic State , western governments are struggling for strategies to challenge sympathy among their citizens towards the militants.
  • (11) You could think the narrator's extreme failures of sympathy are despicable, but this would surely be beside the point.
  • (12) Its coverage was so vindictive and blatantly unfair that it succeeded in winning sympathy for the prime minister, not an easy thing to do these days.
  • (13) The curator Clare Browne has a certain sympathy for Bock – “he was a serious collector, and he saved many pieces which would otherwise certainly have been destroyed” – but even she is startled that he ran his scissors straight through the figure of Christ, sparing only the face, which ended up in the V&A’s half.
  • (14) Speaking at a press conference following the preview of his latest film, Melancholia, von Trier expressed sympathy for Hitler, remarked that Israel was "a pain in the arse" and jokingly confessed to being a Nazi .
  • (15) The Labour leader is determined to retain autonomy on policy and to avoid being dictated to by his party when he is not in sympathy with the message it is giving him.
  • (16) Too many of his answers start with, “I have some sympathy with what you say, but...”; he comes across as just another politician.
  • (17) He has little sympathy for those displaced along the way.
  • (18) This includes the carbon content of fuels, driver behaviour, infrastructure, as well as the potential of car connectivity and intelligent transport systems (ITS).” The industry’s position has won the sympathy of oil companies, which also oppose fuel economy targets for 2025 and 2030.
  • (19) "I've got a great deal of sympathy with the situationist position.
  • (20) Perhaps monstering earns underdog sympathy, with contempt for the press as rife as contempt for conventional politics.