Contextualizebeta

belittle

verb
/bɪˈlɪt.əl/UK

Etymology

From be- + little. Coined by Thomas Jefferson in 1782.

  1. derived from *lewd-✻ — “to bend, crouch, duck”
  2. inherited from *lūtaną✻ — “to bow down, lout”
  3. inherited from *lūtil✻ — “little”
  4. inherited from lȳtel
  5. inherited from litel
  6. prefixed as belittle — “be + little”

Definitions

  1. To knowingly say that (someone or something) is smaller or less important than it…

    To knowingly say that (someone or something) is smaller or less important than it actually is, especially as a way of showing contempt or deprecation.

    • Don't belittle your colleagues.
    • An essential part of any German campaign is obviously the efficiency of its lines of communication and therefore it is dangerous to belittle our enemy's strength in this direction.
    • Under the rules as understood by the New York Times, the West is free to mock and belittle its Judeo-Christian inheritance, and, likewise, the Muslim world is free to mock and belittle the West's Judeo-Christian inheritance.

  2. To make small.

    • Now, the big blue space of river and sky belittled him, ulled him back into bewildered childhood.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at belittle. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01belittle02deprecation03deprecating04deprecates05deprecate

A definitional loop anchored at belittle. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

5 hops · closes at belittle

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA