1word1day | Sunday Word: Vilipend

vilipend [vil-uh-pend]

verb:
(Archaic)
1 to regard or treat as of little value or account.
2 to vilify; depreciate.

Examples:

The fact that to the eighteenth century belong the subjects of more than half of these thirty volumes, is a proof of the fascination of the period for an author who has never ceased to vilipend it. (John Morley, Critical Miscellanies, Volume 1)

What discontent thus change in the doth move?
What wrong, (alas !), or what offence in me,
Thus maks the loath and vilipend my love ? (Sir William Mure, Dido and Aeneas)

He became a gay visitor, and such a reveller, that in process of time he was observed to vilipend the modest fare which had at first been esteemed a banquet by his hungry appetite, and thereby highly displeased my wife. (Sir Walter Scott, Waverley)

I would not willingly vilipend any Christian, if, peradventure, he deserveth that epithet. (Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker)

Origin:

Etymologically speaking, to define vilipend using vilify is to commit a tautology, since both derive from Latin vilis, vile or worthless, which is also obviously enough the source of English vile. Vilipend also includes the verb pendere, to weigh or estimate. To vilipend is to weigh somebody in the balance and find them not worth considering. It appeared in English in the fifteenth century and was a popular term right down into the nineteenth, though it has since dropped out of sight. (World Wide Words)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

meridian_rose

Very interesting!
To vilipend is to weigh somebody in the balance and find them not worth considering. Reminds me of the scene near the end of a Knight's Tale when the antagonist after his defeat imagines the hero and friends telling him "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you absolutely have been found wanting"