deride.

To ridicule someone or something with contempt, treating it as unworthy of respect or serious consideration.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• deride a proposal
• deride someone as naive
• widely derided

On the page

They derided the proposal as naive before reading its evidence.

The critic derided the production's attempts at grandeur.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary / elevated prose. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: deride; derides; derided; derided; deriding Commonness: moderately common (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Direct dictionary reading: contemptuous laughter/insult or bitter, contemptuous ridicule/criticism. Not all criticism qualifies and physical laughter is unnecessary. One core contemptuous-mocking sense avoids over-splitting shades of criticism. Individual usefulness checked for a precise literary, narrative, dialogue or critical function. Definitions and examples are original; commonness is an editorial estimate. Mood and intensity apply only to inherent qualities of the specific sense. Writing functions: mocking something as beneath consideration, contempt distinguished from reasoned disagreement. Third-person singular: derides.