AFFRONT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Affront

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/əfrˈənt/ Listen

noun

Affront n.

1.

An encounter either friendly or hostile. (Obs.) "I walked about, admired of all, and dreaded On hostile ground, none daring my affront."

2.

Contemptuous or rude treatment which excites or justifies resentment; marked disrespect; a purposed indignity; insult. "Offering an affront to our understanding."

3.

An offense to one's self-respect; shame.

Synonyms: Affront, Insult, Outrage. An affront is a designed mark of disrespect, usually in the presence of others. An insult is a personal attack either by words or actions, designed to humiliate or degrade. An outrage is an act of extreme and violent insult or abuse. An affront piques and mortifies; an insult irritates and provokes; an outrage wounds and injures. "Captious persons construe every innocent freedom into an affront. When people are in a state of animosity, they seek opportunities of offering each other insults. Intoxication or violent passion impels men to the commission of outrages."

verb

Affront v. t. (past & past part. affronted; pres. part. affronting)

1.

To front; to face in position; to meet or encounter face to face. (Obs.) "All the sea-coasts do affront the Levant." "That he, as 't were by accident, may here Affront Ophelia."

2.

To face in defiance; to confront; as, to affront death; hence, to meet in hostile encounter. (Archaic)

3.

To offend by some manifestation of disrespect; to insult to the face by demeanor or language; to treat with marked incivility. "How can any one imagine that the fathers would have dared to affront the wife of Aurelius?"

Synonyms: To insult; abuse; outrage; wound; illtreat; slight; defy; offend; provoke; pique; nettle.

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Etymology of 'Affront'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Affront" Quotes from Famous Books

... that we were Egyptians, ordered by Peroa to hold the road against the Satrap who had done affront to Egypt by demanding that its Royal Lady should be given over to him to be sent to the East as a woman-slave, and that if the Satrap wished to clear a road, he could come and do so. Or if it pleased him he could go back towards Memphis, or stay where he was, since we did not wish to strike ...

— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... artisan. "They pocket the affront, and conform in public to what is demanded, satisfying their consciences by worshipping together in private. Do you not know that every head of a family is fined a shilling on every Sunday that he neglects to attend the parish church? You can have been ...

— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... political arts, merely drew from that fact the inference that the position of Rome with reference to Carthage and Viriathus could not but be very unfavourable, and continued at once to cheat and to affront the Romans. Caesar was requested to arrange a conference of deputies of the contending parties at Tegea for the settlement of the question. He did so; but, after Caesar and the Lacedaemonian envoys had waited there long ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly to affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had missed the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of the one who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and given joy to the full, and retains within itself the ...

— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... Napoleon's time, and converted the high-handed men of Sciarra Colonna's age into the effeminate fops of 1800, when a gentleman of noble lineage, having received a box on the ear from another at high noon in the Corso, willingly followed the advice of his confessor, who counselled him to bear the affront with Christian meekness and present his other cheek to the smiter. Customs have remained, fashions have altogether changed; the outward forms of early living have survived, the spirit of life is quite another; and though some families still follow the ...

— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

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