SPURN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does spurn mean? 

• SPURN (verb)
  The verb SPURN has 1 sense:

1. reject with contempt

  Familiarity information: SPURN used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SPURN (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they spurn    ... he / she / it spurns   
Past simple: spurned   
Past participle: spurned   
-ing form: spurning   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Reject with contempt

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

disdain; freeze off; pooh-pooh; reject; scorn; spurn; turn down

Context example:

She spurned his advances

Hypernyms (to "spurn" is one way to...):

decline; refuse (show unwillingness towards)

Verb group:

decline; pass up; refuse; reject; turn down (refuse to accept)

refuse; reject; turn away; turn down (refuse entrance or membership)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "spurn"):

rebuff; repel; snub (reject outright and bluntly)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

spurner (a person who rejects (someone or something) with contempt)

 Context examples 

I will answer for it, that mine thinks herself full as clever, and would spurn any body's assistance.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

“She is dead, perhaps,” said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could have spurned the body of the ruined girl.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know that the proposals which she had proudly spurned only four months ago, would now have been most gladly and gratefully received!

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Down went Pew with a cry that rang high into the night; and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him and passed by.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The first I chose was Celine Varens—another of those steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He spurned him savagely with his foot.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

A variety of occupations, of objects, and of company, which could not be procured at Barton, would be inevitable there, and might yet, she hoped, cheat Marianne, at times, into some interest beyond herself, and even into some amusement, much as the ideas of both might now be spurned by her.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Sir Walter spurned the idea of its being offered in any manner; forbad the slightest hint being dropped of his having such an intention; and it was only on the supposition of his being spontaneously solicited by some most unexceptionable applicant, on his own terms, and as a great favour, that he would let it at all.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

He said, a fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo to retire into a corner, to lie down, and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water, nor did the servant imagine what could possibly ail him.

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