What's the difference between deign and disdain?

Deign


Definition:

  • (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.

Disdain


Definition:

  • (v. t.) A feeling of contempt and aversion; the regarding anything as unworthy of or beneath one; scorn.
  • (v. t.) That which is worthy to be disdained or regarded with contempt and aversion.
  • (v. t.) The state of being despised; shame.
  • (v. t.) To think unworthy; to deem unsuitable or unbecoming; as, to disdain to do a mean act.
  • (v. t.) To reject as unworthy of one's self, or as not deserving one's notice; to look with scorn upon; to scorn, as base acts, character, etc.
  • (v. i.) To be filled with scorn; to feel contemptuous anger; to be haughty.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) People praying, voicing their views and heart, were met with disdain and a level of force exceeding what was needed.
  • (2) Fred had to be substituted to shield him from the crowd’s disdain.
  • (3) It may have been like punk never ‘appened, but you caught a whiff of the movement’s scorched earth puritanism in the mocking disdain with which Smash Hits addressed rock-star hedonism.
  • (4) TV's Jeremy Paxman didn't even bother hiding his disdain for the introduction of weather reports to Newsnight – "It's April.
  • (5) It shows that we still have some way to go to end bigoted banter.” The exchange was also met with disdain on Twitter.
  • (6) He has frequently tested the patience of Japan's conservative sumo authorities with his disdain for the rules of engagement in the ring and his bad behaviour off it.
  • (7) His comic adventures are too many to relate, but it may be said that they culminate in a café of 'singing waiters' where, after a wealth of comic 'business' with the tray, he shows his disdain for articulate speech by singing a vividly explicit song in gibberish.
  • (8) Immigration has been used as a 21st-century incomes policy, mixing a liberal sense of free for all with a free-market disdain for clear and effective rules.
  • (9) Riva, the oldest nominee ever for best actress category, has a very Gallic disdain for such public adulation.
  • (10) "Historians will pore over his many speeches to black audiences," wrote Ta-Nahisi Coates at The Atlantic, and "they will see a president who sought to hold black people accountable for their communities, but was disdainful of those who looked at him and sought the same".
  • (11) Born in July 1954, Christopher Murray Paul-Huhne (his surname until he went to Oxford) has always been something of a Marmite politician, attracting both loyalty and affection, as well as brickbats and disdain.
  • (12) Gil Eliyahu, who stopped working for Binyamin and Sara Netanyahu two and a half years ago, is threatening to sue the couple, claiming he was treated with "humiliating" disdain.
  • (13) It was one of at least half a dozen such unionist experiments, with a variety of partners, which foundered on the rocks of the would-be partners' infirmity of purpose, fear, suspicion and disdain of this bizarre, arrogant, impetuous upstart.
  • (14) Safronkov reserved his fiercest disdain for the UK envoy, Matthew Rycroft, who had said that UK scientists had determined that sarin had been used in the Khan Sheikhun attack and called on Russia to cut ties with Assad, who Rycroft said was bringing Moscow only “shame and humiliation”.
  • (15) The rules extended from healthcare to the environment to workplace safety, but all were grounded in Bush's disdain for the government's role as a regulatory authority.
  • (16) Stevenson did not disdain the genre in which he was operating.
  • (17) Issues Sir Ken, on the other hand, is a professional Yorkshireman and farmer - the sort of chap who prefers to call a retail outlet a shop and treated press and City with equal disdain.
  • (18) The pent-up fury of the parents reflected the intensity of the violent protests that marked a dramatic week in Mexico, which has deepened the political crisis facing President Enrique Peña Nieto as he returns from a week-long trip to China and Australia, seen by many as a sign of disdain for the suffering and anger at home.
  • (19) What is clear now, for those for whom it was ever in doubt, is the reality of Tory values: the disdain with which they view the less fortunate and the reason why the annual cull of the impoverished through malnutrition and hypothermia is not a problem to them.
  • (20) Instead – spoiler alert – to the disdain of many, it opted for a more satisfying, upbeat conclusion.