English edit

Etymology edit

From contemn +‎ -er.

Noun edit

contemner (plural contemners)

  1. One who contemns, who displays contempt towards another.
    • ante 1588: Thomas Cartwright (probably), A Reproofe of Certeine Schismatical Persons, in Cartwrightiana (1951; edited by Albert Peel and Leland Henry Carlson), page 244 (George Allen & Unwin Ltd., Routledge; →ISBN, 0415319897)
      Præsumptuous violators or contemners of the sabbath or holie exercises /.
    • 1861 November, Julia Ward Howe, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, in The Atlantic Monthly, Volume IX, Number LII (February 1862), page 10:
      I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: / “As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; / []
    • 1908, Henry James, chapter VIII, in The Portrait of a Lady (The Novels and Tales of Henry James), New York edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC; republished as The Portrait of a Lady (EBook #283), United States: Project Gutenberg, 1 September 2001:
      From all of which Isabel gathered that Lord Warburton was a nobleman of the newest pattern, a reformer, a radical, a contemner of ancient ways.