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Demean vs Scorn - What's the difference?

demean | scorn |

As verbs the difference between demean and scorn

is that demean is to debase; to lower; to degrade or demean can be to manage; to conduct; to treat while scorn is to feel or display contempt or disdain for something or somebody; to despise.

As nouns the difference between demean and scorn

is that demean is (archaic) management; treatment or demean can be demesne while scorn is (uncountable) contempt or disdain.

demean

English

Etymology 1

(1595) From . Compare English (m).

Verb

(en verb)
  • To debase; to lower; to degrade.
  • * Thackeray
    • Her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.
  • To humble, humble oneself; to humiliate.
  • To mortify.
    • Synonyms
    * debase * lower * degrade

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) .

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To manage; to conduct; to treat.
  • * Milton
    • [Our] clergy have with violence demeaned the matter.
  • To conduct; to behave; to comport; followed by the reflexive pronoun.
  • * Shakespeare
    • They have demeaned themselves / Like men born to renown by life or death.
  • * Clarendon
    • They answered that they should demean themselves according to their instructions.

    Noun

  • (archaic) Management; treatment.
  • * Spenser
    • vile demean and usage bad
  • (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
    • with grave demean and solemn vanity

    Related terms

    * demeanor

    Etymology 3

    Var. of demesne.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • demesne.
  • resources; means.

    • Anagrams

    * * *

    scorn

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To feel or display contempt or disdain for something or somebody; to despise.
  • * C. J. Smith
    • We scorn what is in itself contemptible or disgraceful.
  • To scoff, express contempt.
  • To reject, turn down
    • He scorned her romantic advances.
  • To refuse to do something, as beneath oneself.
    • She scorned to show weakness.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Noun

  • (uncountable) Contempt or disdain.
  • (countable) A display of disdain; a slight.
  • * Dryden
    • Every sullen frown and bitter scorn / But fanned the fuel that too fast did burn.
  • (countable) An object of disdain, contempt, or derision.
  • * Bible, Psalms xliv. 13
    • Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us.

    Usage notes

    * Scorn'' is often used in the phrases ''pour scorn on'' and ''heap scorn on .

    Quotations

    * circa 1605': The cry is still 'They come': our castle's strength / Will laugh a siege to '''scorn — '' * 1967', Rain of tears, real, mist of imagined '''scorn — John Berryman, ''Berryman's Sonnets . New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * scornful

    Anagrams

    *