Scorn

skorn: Fox Talbot connects this English word with the Danish skarn, "dirt," "ordure" "mud," "mire." As distinguished from such words as "mock," "deride," "scoff," all of which refer specifically to the various ways in which scorn finds outward expression, scorn itself denotes a subjective state or reaction.

Further, this state or reaction is not simple but complex. It includes a sense of superiority, resentment, and aversion. This reaction occurs when one is confronted with a person or a proposition that by challenging certain things for itself evokes a vivid sense of one’s own superiority and awakens mingled resentment, repulsion and contempt by the hollowness of its claims and its intrinsic inferiority or worse. Scorn is a hotter, fiercer emotion than disdain or contempt. It is obvious that scorn may--indeed, it not uncommonly does--arise in connection with an not grounded, arrogant sense of self-esteem.

Scorner is the translation of the participle of luts and once of the participle of latsats. For "scorner" the Revised Version (British and American) everywhere substitutes--properly--"scoffer." Outside of Proverbs (and Ho 7:5) the word is to be found only in Ps 1:2. The force of the word has been well indicated by Cheyne, who says that the "scorner (scoffer) is one who despises that which is holy and avoids the company of the noble `wise men,’ but yet in his own vain way seeks for truth; his character is marked by arrogance as that of the wise is characterized by devout caution."