DESPICABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does despicable mean? 

• DESPICABLE (adjective)
  The adjective DESPICABLE has 1 sense:

1. morally reprehensible

  Familiarity information: DESPICABLE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DESPICABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Morally reprehensible

Synonyms:

despicable; slimy; ugly; unworthy; vile; worthless; wretched

Context example:

a slimy little liar

Similar:

evil (morally bad or wrong)

Derivation:

despicability; despicableness (unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values)

 Context examples 

All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I love her a thousand times more for her sweet pity of last night, a pity that made my own hate of the monster seem despicable.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

It was of a much less poignant nature than what the others excited; but Sir Thomas was considering his happiness as very deeply involved in the offence of his sister and friend; cut off by it, as he must be, from the woman whom he had been pursuing with undoubted attachment and strong probability of success; and who, in everything but this despicable brother, would have been so eligible a connexion.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

For indeed, while I was in that prince’s country, I could never endure to look in a glass, after mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Martin told him that his hatred of the magazines was rabid, fanatical, and that his conduct was a thousand times more despicable than that of the youth who burned the temple of Diana at Ephesus.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable: and they may be poor; but I believe they are as much gentry as the Reeds are; for one day, nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Eyre came to Gateshead and wanted to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty miles off; he seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he was going on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail from London in a day or two.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I'll tell you all about it sometime, she never will, because after telling me that she despised and was ashamed of me, she lost her heart to the despicable party and married the good-for-nothing.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

In answer to which I assured his honour, that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was going to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn't have been surprised to see sinister faces, the faces of "Wolfshiem's people," behind him in the dark shrubbery.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)