despect means contempt, derision. It carries an Arena rating of 1672, earned across 82 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, despect ranks #1,033 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #2,406 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #3,452 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #4,236 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound.
despect is pronounced /dɪˈspɛkt/.
Why “despect” is a great word
DESPECT — [Noun] Contempt or derision; the act or state of looking down upon someone or something. From Middle English despect, from Latin dēspectus ("a looking down upon, contempt"), from dēspicere ("to look down upon, despise"), from dē ("down") + specere ("to look at"). Unlike "disdain," which implies a haughty, personal scorn, or "respect," its direct and elevating opposite, despect is the cold, formal architecture of contempt made structural. It is the measured chill in a magistrate's gaze, the deliberate omission of a name from an invitation, or the architectural sneer of a marble balcony over a muddy street—a quiet calculus of dismissal, the judgment rendered not in heat but in the chill of final assessment.
Etymology
From Middle English despect (“contempt, spite”), from Latin dēspectus (“a looking down upon, contempt”), from dēspicere (“to look down upon, despise, scorn”), from dē (“down”) + specere (“to look at, behold”), equivalent to de- + -spect.
verb
- To hold in contempt, to despise, to look down on, to scorn.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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