SNEERING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sneering mean? 

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

1. expressive of contempt

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SNEERING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Expressive of contempt

Synonyms:

sneering; snide; supercilious

Context example:

makes many a sharp comparison but never a mean or snide one

Similar:

uncomplimentary (tending to (or intended to) detract or disparage)

 Context examples 

Yes, yes, pray pass me, added her husband, with a sort of sneering consciousness; I have nothing to say that can entertain Miss Woodhouse, or any other young lady.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

You are dreaming, sir,—or you are sneering.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

How long this horrible thing lasted I know not; but it seemed that a long time must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

This last with a sneering ring of triumph in it.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

It was achievement accomplished at the very time Judge Blount was sharing this general view and sneering at his Spencer and his intellect.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Through all this sneering talk, I was made to feel the threat of death that overhung me, and my cheeks burned and my heart beat painfully in my breast.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Miss Bingley saw all this likewise; and, in the imprudence of anger, took the first opportunity of saying, with sneering civility: Pray, Miss Eliza, are not the —shire Militia removed from Meryton?

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

This to the alderman of Norwich, who had listened to him with a frowning brow and a sneering lip.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And all this with such a sneering, leering, insolent face that I would have knocked him down twenty times over if he had been a man of my own age.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneering coolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying it off, sir, really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make capital out of this accident,’ said he, ‘I am naturally helpless.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)