Demean vs Belittle - What's the difference?
demean | belittle |
To debase; to lower; to degrade.
* Thackeray
To humble, humble oneself; to humiliate.
To mortify.
To manage; to conduct; to treat.
* Milton
To conduct; to behave; to comport; followed by the reflexive pronoun.
* Shakespeare
* Clarendon
(archaic) Management; treatment.
* Spenser
(archaic) Behavior; conduct; bearing; demeanor.
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , V.5:
*:‘When thou hast all this doen, then bring me newes / Of his demeane […].’
* West
To knowingly say that something is smaller or less important than it actually is.
* {{quote-book, year=2006
, author=Mark Steyn
, title=America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It
, chapter=9
, isbn=0895260786
, page=201
, passage=Under the rules as understood by the New York Times'', the West is free to mock and belittle''' its Judeo-Christian inheritance, and, likewise, the Muslim world is free to mock and ' belittle the West's Judeo-Christian inheritance.}}
As verbs the difference between demean and belittle
is that demean is to debase; to lower; to degrade while belittle is to knowingly say that something is smaller or less important than it actually is.As a noun demean
is management; treatment.demean
English
Etymology 1
(1595) From . Compare English (m).Verb
(en verb)- Her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.
Synonyms
* debase * lower * degradeEtymology 2
From (etyl) .Verb
(en verb)- [Our] clergy have with violence demeaned the matter.
- They have demeaned themselves / Like men born to renown by life or death.
- They answered that they should demean themselves according to their instructions.
Noun
- vile demean and usage bad
- with grave demean and solemn vanity