derision

From Old French derision, from Latin dērīsiōnem, accusative of dērīsiō, from dērīdēre ("to mock, to laugh at, to deride").

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈɹɪʒən/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪʒən

derision (countable and uncountable, plural derisions)

1. Act of treating with disdain.
   • 1969, Mario Puzo, The Godfather:

     There was just a touch of derision in the Don's voice and Hagen flushed.

   • 2011 December 15, Felicity Cloake, “How to cook the perfect nut roast”, in Guardian‎:

     One of the darlings of the early vegetarian movement (particularly in its even sadder form, the cutlet), it was on the menu at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium [sic], and has since become the default Sunday option for vegetarians – and a default source of derision for everyone else.

2. Something to be derided; a laughing stock.
   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 14, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

     Miss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place as companion was a sinecure and a derision […]

• hold in derision

• deride
• derider
• ridicule
• ridiculous
• ridiculosity

• “derision”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “derision”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• Ironside, ironised, ironside, resinoid