contumely

英文词源

contumely

contumely: [14] The idea underlying contumely ‘insolence’ is ‘swelling up’. It comes, via Old French contumelie, from Latin contumēlia ‘insult, reproach’, a compound noun formed from the intensive prefix com- and (probably) tumēre ‘swell’ (source of English tumour). The sense development – from being ‘puffed up’ and ‘angry’, ‘proud’, or ‘stubborn’ through ‘overbearing’ to ‘insulting’ – appears also to be reflected in contumacy ‘insubordination’ [14], whose Latin source contumācia likewise probably came from tumēre.
=> contumacy, tumour

contumely (n.)

late 14c., from Old French contumelie, from Latin contumelia "a reproach, insult," probably related to contumax "haughty, stubborn," from com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + tumere "to swell up" (see tumid).

The unhappy man left his country forever. The howl of contumely followed him across the sea, up the Rhine, over the Alps; it gradually waxed fainter; it died away; those who had raised it began to ask each other, what, after all, was the matter about which they had been so clamorous, and wished to invite back the criminal whom they had just chased from them. [Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Lord Byron," 1877]