Noun: spite
| Singular | spite |
| Plural | spites |
Sample Sentences
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He was so filled with spite for his ex-wife, his brother was afraid of what he might do.
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They did it just for spite.
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This is the deadly spite that angers. [c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:]
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Out of spite, the human beings pretended not to believe that it was Snowball who had destroyed the windmill: they said that it had fallen down because the walls were too thin. [1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:]
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sex with older men was a way to both internalize my spite towards my mother and to find security in a father figure I lacked with my own father. [2014, Emivita, By Any Means Necessary: My Personal Struggles with Good and Evil:]
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"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite." [c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]:]
Nouns inflected like spite
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English spit, a shortening of despit (whence despite), from Old French despit, from Latin dēspectum (“looking down on”), from Latin dēspiciō (“to look down, despise”). Compare also North Frisian spīt, spīd (“regret”), Saterland Frisian Spiet (“regret, remorse”), West Frisian spyt (“regret”), Dutch spijt (“regret, remorse”), German Low German Spiet (“anger, regret, remorse”), German Spiet (“annoyance, vexation”), Swedish spit (“insult, outrage, annoyance”), Norwegian spit (“insult, outrage, annoyance”). See: Middle English Nouns '
spit', Latin Nouns '
dēspectum', Latin Nouns '
dēspiciō', Dutch Nouns '
spijt'.