Patronize vs Condescend - What's the difference?
patronize | condescend |
To make a patron.
To assume a tone of unjustified superiority; to talk down to; to treat condescendingly.
To make oneself a customer of a business, especially a regular customer.
(lb) To come down from one's superior position; to deign (to do something).
*1665 , (John Dryden), (The Indian Emperour) , act 1, sc.2:
*:Spain's mighty monarch/ In gracious clemency, does condescend / On these conditions, to become your friend.
*1847 , (Anne Bronte),
*:Fanny and little Harriet he seldom condescended to notice; but Mary Ann was something of a favourite.
(lb) To treat (someone) as though inferior; to be patronizing (toward someone); to talk down (to someone).
*1861 , (Charles Dickens), (Great Expectations) , Ch.29:
*:"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart."
*1880 , ,
*:Ermine never let any one be condescending to her, and conducted the conversation with her usual graceful good breeding.
*
*:At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy?; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends , turning technicality into pabulum.
To consent, agree.
*1671 , (John Milton), (Samson Agonistes) , lines 1134-36:
*:Can they think me so broken, so debased / With corporal servitude, that my mind ever / Will condescend to such absurd commands?
*1868 , (Horatio Alger),
*:"This is the pay I get for condescending to let you go with me."
To come down.
Condescend is a synonym of patronize.
As verbs the difference between patronize and condescend
is that patronize is to make a patron while condescend is to come down from one's superior position; to deign (to do something).patronize
English
Alternative forms
* patronise (Commonwealth)Verb
(patroniz)Synonyms
* (talk down to) condescendcondescend
English
Verb
(en verb)Agnes Grey, Ch.5:
Clever Woman of the Family, Ch.7:
Struggling Upward, Ch.3: