Scorn

How to spell scorn

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scorn

What does scorn mean?

1. nounA feeling or expression of contempt, treating someone or something as worthless or beneath respect.
2. verbTo reject or treat something with open contempt, as unworthy of consideration.

Scorn in a sentence

• noun

  The manager's scorn for sloppy paperwork was obvious in every memo.

• verb

  Wealthy investors tend to scorn schemes that promise guaranteed returns.

• noun

  She heaped scorn on the excuses her tenant kept offering.

• verb

  She would scorn any offer that undervalued her work.

Where does scorn come from?

Language of origin: French

Scorn entered Middle English in the 1200s from Old French, where the noun escarn meant 'mockery' or 'derision' and the verb escharnir meant 'to mock' or 'to deride'. Those French forms were themselves of Germanic origin, going back to a root related to old words for jeering and ridicule, and a cousin survives in Italian schernire, 'to mock'. As the word crossed into English it lost its opening vowel, an aphetic clipping that turned escarn into scorn, which is why the modern spelling starts straight in on the consonant cluster. The sense broadened over time from open mockery to the colder feeling of contempt, the idea that something or someone is beneath one's regard. Because the word is short and the vowel is fully spelled out by the 'or', it carries none of the silent-letter traps that catch its longer relatives, and it has kept the same blunt form for roughly eight hundred years.

How the word is built

• scorn (a single root; from Old French escarn 'mockery, derision', no productive affixes)