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Contumely vs Mockery - What's the difference?

contumely | mockery | Related terms |

Contumely is a related term of mockery.


As nouns the difference between contumely and mockery

is that contumely is offensive and abusive language or behaviour; scorn, insult while mockery is the action of mocking; ridicule, derision.

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.

    mockery

    English

    Noun

    (mockeries)
  • The action of mocking; ridicule, derision.
  • Something so lacking in necessary qualities as to inspire ridicule; a laughing-stock.
  • (obsolete) Something insultingly imitative; an offensively futile action, gesture etc.
  • Mimicry, imitation, now usually in a derogatory sense; a travesty, a ridiculous simulacrum.
  • The defendant wasn't allowed to speak at his own trial - it was a mockery of justice.

    Usage notes

    * We often use make a mockery' of someone or something, meaning to ' mock them. See also

    Synonyms

    * See also