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”, “It cost the Bulgarian tennis player his disdain dearly”, “Given 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, he does not pay attention or respect her. In this way he is placed 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 has spoken rudely to her. Her agent, instead of listening to her carefully and giving her an answer according to her function, answers her with disdain, telling her not to waste her time with an unimportant matter.
Take the case of someone who enters a municipal office to carry out a procedure. This individual approaches an employee for assistance, but the employee simply indicates that he can look up the information on the Internet. Despite the insistence of the interested party, he does not provide further information. It can be said, therefore, that the municipal employee treated with disdain the neighbor who needed assistance to carry out a certain task.
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 to 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, elusiveness, postponement, offense and outrage.
As usual, his list of antonyms is much less extensive, since it is made up of only the following three terms: respect, esteem and appreciation. Let us think of an offensive treatment, which consists of a snub (generally gratuitous) towards a third party, who feels confused and outraged by such an elusive attitude, which postpones his interests and his very 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 make 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 perceived 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 lack of education if we place ourselves in a case of apparent arbitrariness, that is, a show of disinterest towards someone who has not done anything to deserve this treatment. Similarly, if we focus on their antonyms, they may well be considered typical of a well- educated person, especially if you use them when talking to individuals you don’t know, such as customers in your store or just strangers. who approach her to ask her something on the street.
“Desdén”, finally, is the title of a 1933 tango 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 deal with idealized love, for example.
