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Contumely vs Ferocious - What's the difference?

contumely | ferocious |

As a noun contumely

is offensive and abusive language or behaviour; scorn, insult.

As an adjective ferocious is

marked by extreme and violent energy.

contumely

English

Noun

  • Offensive and abusive language or behaviour; scorn, insult.
  • * :
  • For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time, The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely [...].
  • * 1857 , , Volume the Second, page 19 (ISBN 1857150570)
  • She had been subjected to contumely and cross-questoning and ill-usage through the whole evening.
  • * 1914 , (Grace Livingston Hill), The Best Man :
  • What scorn, what contumely , would be his!
  • * 1953 , (James Strachey), translating Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams , Avon Books, p. 178:
  • If this picture of the two psychical agencies and their relation to the consciousness is accepted, there is a complete analogy in political life to the extraordinary affection which I felt in my dream for my friend R., who was treated with such contumely during the dream's interpretation.
  • * 1976 , (Robert Nye), Falstaff :
  • I could think of no words adequate to the occasion. So I belched. Not out of contumely , you understand. It was a sympathetic belch, a belch of brotherhood.

    ferocious

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Marked by extreme and violent energy.
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2011 , date=October 1 , author=Tom Fordyce , title=Rugby World Cup 2011: England 16-12 Scotland , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=Scotland needed a victory by eight points to have a realistic chance of progressing to the knock-out stages, and for long periods of a ferocious contest looked as if they might pull it off.}}
  • Extreme or intense.
  • Synonyms

    * fierce

    Derived terms

    * ferociously