Word.ws English Dictionary

contempts

contempts is the plural of contempt.

Meaning of contempt

Noun

contempt (countable and uncountable, plural contempts)

  1. (uncountable) The state or act of contemning; the feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn, disdain.
    • And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes. He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  2. The state of being despised or dishonored; disgrace.
  3. Open disrespect or willful disobedience of the authority of a court of law or legislative body.
    • The panel voted unanimously on Tuesday to recommend charging Mr. [Stephen K.] Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena, sending the issue to the House.2021 October 19, Luke Broadwater, “House Panel Recommends Contempt Charge Against Bannon”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Phrases with contempts

Questions about contempts

What is contempts the plural of?
Contempts is the plural of contempt.

Words near contempts in the dictionary

  1. contemptibleness
  2. contemptibly
  3. contemption
  4. contemptive
  5. contemptives
  6. contempts
  7. contempts of court
  8. contemptuosities
  9. contemptuosity
  10. contemptuous
  11. contemptuously

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contempts (page history and authors); contempt (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “contempts.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contempts. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.