Word: contemptible
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...says Mullan, "we didn't even have any furniture. We were dirt poor." The family's emotional landscape was even more barren. Mullan's father, an alcoholic World War II veteran, was an abusive and distant figure who seemed actively to court his family's contempt. When Mullan was 14 - by this time, he says, his father "had been serially raping my mother for a number of years" - the boy decided to take action. He prepared a cup of tea, added a generous dose of rat poison and took it into the sitting room. "I'd never made...
...people in Montana got water this year than in 1988. Sometimes, Loble says, just holding a meeting is all it takes to get two disputing parties to work together. And other times Loble gets tough. A few weeks ago, a rancherwas put on notice by a water commissioner for contempt of court for taking toomuch water out of the Musselshell. The penalty for the rancher's infraction was a $500 fine-and $500 more to stay out of jail. "Traditionally, irrigating farmers and ranchers just took all the water they could, regardless of other rights," Loble says. "This year...
...Britain. The inspectors have not been allowed back since, and the resulting standoff has seen the UN sanctions regime crumbling, while substantial components of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs remain unaccounted for. Thus President Bush's exhortation to the international body to tackle Saddam's "contempt...
...Ironically enough, much of Naipaul's contempt is reserved for title-conscious ex-colonials. "Calcutta still has an isolated aging set with British titles," he writes. On St. Kitts, "the governor is a Negro knight from another island." And in Belize, "the Premier likes to use titles." These are unlikely observations from a Trinidadian of Indian descent who accepted a British knighthood with both hands. But, along with many other characterizations in this collection, they are from the archive. Naipaul has ceased to be so breezy and has stopped accepting the sort of assignments that in the past resulted...
There was also an incident this week involving general co-worker contempt for what I saw as a completely reasonable decision, given that there is no shortage of refrigerator space in our office, to bring a jar of mayonnaise to work and then put it on my sandwich at noon rather than putting it on in the morning and letting the sandwich get soggy in my bag. That topic is still too painful for me to write about at length...