Contempt
feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless
In colloquial usage, contempt usually refers to either the act of despising, or having a general lack of respect for something. This set of emotions generally produces maladaptive behaviour. Other authors define contempt as a negative emotion rather than the constellation of mentality and feelings that produce an attitude. Paul Ekman categorises contempt as the seventh basic emotion, along with anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. Robert C. Solomon places contempt on the same emotional continuum as resentment and anger, and he argues that the differences between the three are that resentment is anger directed towards a higher-status individual; anger is directed towards an equal-status individual; and contempt is anger directed towards a lower-status individual.
Etymology
The term originated in 1393 in Old French from the Latin word contemptus meaning "scorn". It is the past participle of contemnere and from con- intensive prefix + temnere "to slight, scorn"; contemptuous appeared in 1529.
Cultural context
Ekman and Friesen (1986) identified a specific facial expression that observers in ten different cultures, both Western and non-Western, agreed signaled contempt. In this study, residents of West Sumatra, Indonesia, viewed photos of American, Japanese, and Indonesian people. Their ability to classify some facial expressions as contempt versus the primary emotions of anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, fear, or surprise showed that across cultures, general contempt is universally understood (with level of agreement equating to 75%).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Contempt” is feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Contempt, feeling and attitude, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5338825. The Library of Congress control number is sh00001122. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1393, 1529 and 1986.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Contempt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.