Definition of "deride" [de•ride]

• To speak of or treat with contemptuous mirth. See Synonyms at ridicule. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "If you strove for it sincerely at any time, no matter how remote, you could never again deride it."
• "The fact that someone would see that as something to deride is beyond words"
• "Defy the tempest & the storm deride is not in the original nor is it good. ποθος [19] is hardly fierce desire — & all such expressions of ram-cat raptures are bad. by the by she a dark lanthern might have deprived us of this poem. your storm is very good — zounds I sweat at the bare idea of the"