Idioms

despise

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despise (one) for (something)

To hate one for a particular reason. Don't even mention Tiffany's name to me—I despise her for starting that rumor about me last year. She slammed the door in my face, so yeah, I think she still despises me for cheating on her. I know you're supposed to forgive and forget, but I can't help it—I just despise him for what he's done to me.
See also: despise, for
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

despise someone for something

to hate someone for something or for doing something. I just despise him for running away! She despised herself for her dishonest actions.
See also: despise, for
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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References in periodicals archive
I have grown to despise one smug, fop-haired individual featured on the commercial to such an extent, I have vowed to seek him out and sneer: "Should've been a milkman like me.
There was today a temptation to despise the winning motive, but he did not think there was any danger of Yorkshire going in for the losing motive.
Iranians despise the MKO for acting as a spying outfit for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War.
Pete Doherty of the Libertines said: "I don't think you have to be a particularly developed human being intellectually or spiritually to despise racism.
In the wake of Enron, Global Crossing and a hundred other examples of corporate governance gone wrong, no public company CEO will ever again have the kind of free reign that reporters and investors alternately admire and despise. Heightened demands for transparency in reporting both financial and operational metrics mean that CEOs live in a fishbowl where every decision is reviewed not just by boards, but by investors, employees, communities and pundits.
If you despise your "four-eyes," contacts can do wonders for self-confidence, too.
Writers have every reason to fear and despise religion -- which perennially fears and despises them -- but there was a peculiar passivity, indeed a paralysis of imagination, in this group's willingness to leave the defining process entirely to the hard-liners (and, by implication, to the earnest and incurably sloganeering efforts of the liberal soft-liners).
The more you intimidate, the more you despise the hands that feed you.
Without this--with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need--this life is hell.
The satire is double-edged--directed against both the townspeople and the superficial intellectualism of those who despise them.
The far more secular Sherman had learned in his pre-war life to respect the law, resist disorder, and despise citizens who failed to "place loyalty to the nation and obedience to its government ahead of all other loyalties".
For people who are despised, who despise themselves, more self-esteem might be a good thing.
'Only those who despise the poor despise someone like Sister Pat and would want her out of the Philippines,' Palabay said.
They seem to believe they represent the interests of our country, yet they actually despise our freedoms and institutions.
I've grown to despise the Lottery because it's a tax on the poor and because it's a tax on those who are poor at maths (well at least sixfifths of them).
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