It came in as a kind of a rude word really, a mocking word for somebody seen as socially inadequate, or somehow rather unfashionable, or contemptible in some way.
Kiss me, oh kiss me lots of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug-I can't bear it" ! She rushed up to him and, with her mouth on his, continued: " I must tell you-oh I must-my darling Love!
I told him, " I had likewise observed another thing, that, when I first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, I thought they were the most little contemptible creatures I had ever beheld" .
There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed.
When I have laboured out a story, I suddenly see it in a light of such contemptible triviality that to work at it is an impossible thing.' 'You are ill, that's the fact of the matter.
The modern maxims of foreign commerce, by aiming at the impoverishment of all our neighbours, so far as they are capable of producing their intended effect, tend to render that very commerce insignificant and contemptible.
The person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it, and, instead of being one of the most respectable, is rendered one of the meanest and most contemptible persons in the society.
For, I cannot adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella should show any favor to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby, so very far below the average.