in spite of

EnglishEdit

(idiomatic) Despite, irrespective of, notwithstanding.
- 1898, Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, Courier Dover Publications (1991), →ISBN, page 72,
  No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which—and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness.

In spite of is at once three words and one preposition; as may be seen in the 1898 quotation above, it is not separated during preposition-stranding (hence “in spite of which […] ”, never *“of which […] in spite”), but it may sometimes be separated by an adverb (as in “in spite also of”).
The phrase is often misused where regardless of would be appropriate.

despite

Arabic: رَغْم أَنَّ‎‎ (raḡm ʾanna), رُغْم أَنَّ‎‎ (ruḡm ʾanna)
Egyptian Arabic: راغم ان‎‎ (raḡm en)
Armenian: չնայած (hy) (čʿnayac)
Bashkir: ҡарамаҫтан (qaramaθtan)
Catalan: malgrat (ca)
Chinese:
Mandarin: 儘管 (zh), 尽管 (zh) (jǐnguǎn), 不顧 (zh), 不顾 (zh) (bùgù), 不管 (zh) (bùguǎn), 任憑 (zh), 任凭 (zh) (rènpíng), 即使 (zh) (jíshǐ)
Czech: přes (cs), vzdor (cs), navzdory (cs)
Danish: på trods af, til trods for
Dutch: ondanks (nl)
Esperanto: malgraŭ (eo)
Finnish: huolimatta (fi)
French: malgré (fr), en dépit de (fr), bien que (fr)
Georgian: მიუხედავად (miuxedavad)
German: trotz (de)
Greek: παρά (el) (pará)