/spɜːn/, /spɝn/
OriginFrom Middle English spurnen, spornen, from Old English spurnan (“to strike against, kick, spurn, reject; stumble”), from Proto-Germanic *spurnaną (“to tread, kick, knock out”), from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-.
Cognate with Scots spurn (“to strike, push, kick”), German spornen (“to spur on”), Icelandic sporna, spyrna (“to kick”), Latin spernō (“despise, distain, scorn”). Related to spur and spread.
- ambitransitiveTo reject disdainfully; contemn; scorn.
“to spurn at your most royal image”
“What safe and nicely I might well delay
By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.”
“Domestics will pay a more ready and cheerful service, when they find themselves not spurned, because fortune has laid them below the level of others, at their master's feet.”
- transitiveTo reject something by pushing it away with the foot.
“Me thinks I ſee kings kneeling at his feet,
And he with frowning browes and fiery lookes,
Spurning their crownes from off their captiue heads.”
“I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.”
- transitiveTo waste; fail to make the most of (an opportunity)
“Marouane Chamakh then spurned a great chance to kill the game off when he ran onto Andrey Arshavin's lofted through ball but shanked his shot horribly across the face of goal.”
- intransitive, obsoleteTo kick or toss up the heels.
“oft' the ſudden Gale
Ruffles the Tide, and ſhifts the dang'rous Sail,
[…]
The drunken Chairman in the Kennel ſpurns,
The Glaſſes ſhatters, and his Charge o'erturns.”
- An act of spurning; a scornful rejection.
- archaicA kick; a blow with the foot.
“What defence can properly be used in such a despicable encounter as this but either the slap or the spurn?”
- obsoleteDisdainful rejection; contemptuous treatment.
“The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.”
- A body of coal left to sustain an overhanging mass.
Formsspurns(present, singular, third-person) · spurning(participle, present) · spurned(participle, past) · spurned(past) · spurns(plural)