The term disdain is used to refer to the apathy or reluctance with which a certain action is carried out. Disdain is linked to indifference . For example: "I went to ask the director for explanations but he answered me with disdain" , "The Bulgarian tennis player's disdain cost him dearly" , "Faced with the government's disdain, the protesters announced a new march" .
It is possible to associate disdain with contempt or detachment . When a person treats another with disdain, they do not pay attention to or respect them. In this way, one places oneself in a position of superiority : the interlocutor, in a certain way, is denied or belittled.
Suppose a woman approaches a police officer and informs him that a man swore at her. The agent, instead of listening to her carefully and giving her an answer appropriate to his role, answers her with disdain , telling her not to waste her time with an unimportant matter.
Let's take the case of someone who enters a municipal office to carry out a procedure. This individual goes to an employee to ask for assistance, but the worker simply tells him that he can search for the information on the Internet . Despite the insistence of the interested party, it does not provide further information. It can be said, therefore, that the municipal employee treated the neighbor who needed assistance to carry out a certain task with disdain .
One of the most recommended ways to understand the meaning of words is to refer to their synonyms, that series of terms that do not always mean exactly the same thing but that at least provide endless nuances that help us notice all their vertices. In the specific case of disdain , and subtracting the synonyms already mentioned in the previous paragraphs, we have the following: snub, indifference, evasion, postponement, offense and outrage .
As usually happens, its list of antonyms is much less extensive, since it is made up of only the following three terms: respect, estimation and appreciation . Let's think about offensive treatment, which consists of a snub (generally gratuitous) towards a third party, who feels confused and outraged by such an avoidant attitude, who postpones his interests and his own existence with total indifference.
These synonyms, therefore, help us to closely study all the corners of the meaning of the word disdain , both those that affect the attitude of the person who practices it and those that can be seen in the person who receives it. In modern life, disdain is often noticed in an apparently unjustified way, as a result of the stress caused by work and student pressures; It is not the same to treat someone who has hurt us in this way as it is to treat a stranger.
That said, it is possible to associate disdain with a lack of education if we consider a case of apparent arbitrariness, that is, a display of disinterest towards someone who has done nothing to deserve this treatment. Similarly, if we focus on their antonyms, they may well be considered typical of a well- educated person, especially if they are used when speaking to individuals whom they do not know, such as customers of their store or simply strangers. who approach her to ask her something on the street.
«Desdén» , finally, is the title of a tango from 1933 with music by Carlos Gardel and whose lyrics were written by Mario Battistella . Disdain is one of the recurring themes of tango, as well as many others that are framed in the difficulties of everyday life and the complexity of human relationships, unlike musical styles that address idealized love, for example.