sneer

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   smile contemptuously

   They sneered at our efforts to play chopsticks on the giant foot piano.

2. 2
   verb

   express through a scornful smile

   We sneered our contempt.

3. 3
   verb

   To raise a corner of the upper lip slightly, especially in scorn.

   So General Oakfield's friends taunted him with having been beaten, and Blackeston's friends sneered at him for not having called the general out. Blackeston, a studious and sensitive man, felt the taunts of his friends as only a student can.

4. 4
   verb

   To utter with a grimace or contemptuous expression; to say sneeringly.

   to sneer fulsome lies at a person

5. 5
   noun

   A facial expression where one slightly raises one corner of the upper lip, generally indicating scorn.

   Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinked lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

6. 6
   noun

   A display of contempt; scorn.

   And wordy attacks against slavery drew sneers from observers which were not altogether undeserved. The authors were compared to doctors who offered to a patient nothing more than invectives against the disease which consumed him.

7. 7
   noun

   a facial expression of contempt or scorn

8. 8
   noun

   a contemptuous or scornful remark

Etymology

From Middle English sneren (“to mock, scoff at”), from Old English fnǣran (“to snort”), from Proto-West Germanic *fnāʀijan, from Proto-Germanic *fnesaną (“to pant, gasp”). Akin to North Frisian sneere (“to scorn”), Middle High German snerren (“to chatter; gossip”), Danish snerre (“to growl, snarl”).