Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use scornful in a sentence

14 example sentences · adjective

Scornful means showing scorn or disrespect; contemptuous; scathing; withering. Example: “"I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful.”

Examples of scornful by meaning

adjectiveShowing scorn or disrespect; contemptuous; scathing; withering.

  • "I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful.1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, “Silverside”, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC, page 316

More sentences with scornful

  • A few scornful, sarcastic comebacks came to mind, but I kept it playerish.2015, Oasis, White Heat, page 30. From the entry playerish
  • He's scornful of her big, overswollen ego and her big overswollen movie ideas.2012, C. Stephen Jaeger, Enchantment: On Charisma and the Sublime in the Arts of the West. From the entry overswollen
  • “Did we get him?” he repeated in a scornful, big-brotherish sort of tone.1902, Tudor Jenks, Gypsy, the Talking Dog, page 217. From the entry big-brotherish
  • Marcelle, Clothilde, Virginie, bored and scornful, passed slowly round, squirming and wriggling in the time-honoured fashion of mannequins.1928, Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train. From the entry mannequin
  • It is a note scornful, defiant, often ribald and profane, that comes into the songs of the goliards and troubadours.1920, A. S. Turberville, Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition, London: Crosby Lockwood and Son. From the entry goliard
  • The unicorn stamped and gave him a scornful look as Sally cycloned away from them, but Wulfric laughed to himself a crafty laugh.2020, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Songs From the Seashell Archives. From the entry cyclone
  • Both had something of the traditional Quaker character, earnest, dour, enduring, scornful of imposed orthodoxies, desirous of spiritual release through a roughcast mysticism.2014, Morris Bishop, A History of Cornell. From the entry roughcast
  • Something in the scornful accent and the deep voice aroused the suspicions of the verger, though the words were spoken in English.2006, Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards, In the Days of My Youth. Volume 1. From the entry ravenly
  • He was a young man with a scornful mouth and the bright blue eyes of a healthy baby set in a dark sensitive face.1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Offshore Pirate”, in Flappers and Philosophers, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, page 11. From the entry Grecian
  • Elbows almost touching they leaned at ease, idly reading the almost obliterated lines engraved there. ¶ "I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful.1907, Robert W. Chambers, chapter VIII, in The Younger Set. From the entry elbow
  • Then she hugged the kiddie clost to her, standing straight and queenly, her eyes ablaze, her lips moist, and red, and scornful.1904, Rex Beach, Pardners. From the entry clost
  • He walked arrogant and scornful among the Texans and cavalrymen whom he hazed and buffaloed with the barrels of his guns when they got out of line.1975, Cliff Farrell, The Mighty Land, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, →ISBN, page 111. From the entry buffalo
  • But she also remembers Phillips as someone who ‘people liked to be a bit scornful of, the kind of man they would like to put down, although he was unputdownable’.2005, Mike Hally, Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age, London: Granta, →ISBN. From the entry unputdownable

Meaning of scornful

  1. adjective Showing scorn or disrespect; contemptuous; scathing; withering.

Full definition of scornful

Questions about scornful in a sentence

How do you use scornful in a sentence?
Scornful is used as an adjective. For example: “"I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful.”
What is a short sentence with scornful?
“"I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful.”
What does scornful mean?
Scornful means showing scorn or disrespect; contemptuous; scathing; withering.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scornful (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use scornful in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/scornful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.