Noun

Act of treating with disdain.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=December 15 , author=Felicity Cloake , title=How to cook the perfect nut roast , work=Guardian citation , page= , passage=One of the darlings of the early vegetarian movement (particularly in its even sadder form, the cutlet), it was on the menu at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium [sic], and has since become the default Sunday option for vegetarians – and a default source of derision for everyone else.}}

* 1969 , , The Godfather :

There was just a touch of derision in the Don's voice and Hagen flushed.

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.