sneer

present singular third person sneers · participle present sneering · participle past sneered · past sneered

1. intransitiveTo 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.

   1890, Henry Kingsley, Old Margaret: And Other Stories, page 393

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

   to sneer fulsome lies at a person

   1 more example

   There was a quick scuffle within the cabin. "Leave me alone, I say, and git!" cried the cook. "Can't I be friendly without you hollerin?" sneered the miner. "You wouldn't have been 'lowed to stay round here if it hadn't been for me."

   1913, Land of Sunshine, page 116

   Synonyms: fleer

plural sneers

1. 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

   1817 (published 11 January 1818), Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Sonnet. Ozymandias.”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume III, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, →OCLC, page 67

   1 more example

   He supposed then (with a sneer—M. Paul could sneer supremely, curling his lip, opening his nostrils, contracting his eyelids)—he supposed there was but one form of appeal to which I would listen [...]

   1835, Charlotte Brontë, chapter XXX, in Villette

2. 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.

   1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 24

   2 more examples

   It was a casual sneer, obviously one of a long line. There was hatred behind it, but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity that passed over the younger man's ravaged face.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 8, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

   During [Tucker] Carlson’s keynote, he wedged sneers at his critics for crying “racist!” in between racist remarks about [Ilhan] Omar, jeremiads against the media (“I know there’s a bunch of reporters here, so . . . screw you”), and an attack on Elizabeth Warren and her donors (“She’s a tragedy, because she’s now obsessed with racism, which is why the finance world supports her”)—all to gleeful applause.

   2019 July 24, David Austin Walsh, “Flirting With Fascism”, in Jewish Currents