contumely kän-ˈtü-mə-lē , kən-, -ˈtyü-; ˈkän-tü-ˌmē-lē, -tyü-ˌ, -chə- noun
: a rude expression intended to offend or hurt
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The word contumely has appeared in four articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Nov. 26 in the book review “Los Angeles Through the Centuries, Glimpsed by Kerouac, de Beauvoir, Waugh and Others” by Dwight Garner:
English-language writers condescended to Southern California for so long that it became a national reflex, a semi-voluntary tic.
W.H. Auden called Los Angeles “the Great Wrong Place.” Truman Capote said it was redundant to die there. Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker, wrote in 1941 that Californians “live in a world of rumors, dreams and superstitions, because newspapers out there don’t print much news.”
… David Kipen, in the new anthology he has edited, “Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018,” isn’t on a rescue mission exactly. He prints plenty of contumely — mostly snobbish disapproval from Eastern visitors — about his hometown.
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