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The Middle English "afronten," the ancestor of the Modern English verb "affront," was borrowed from the Anglo-French afrunter, a verb which means "to defy" but which also has the specific meaning "to strike on the forehead" or "to slap on the face." These more literal senses reveal the word's Latin origins, a combination of the Latin prefix ad-, meaning "to" or "towards," and "front-, frons," which means "forehead" (and which is also the source of the English word front). While the striking or slapping sense of "afrunter" was not adopted by English, it is alluded to in the oldest uses of "afronten" in Middle English in the sense of "to insult especially to the face."
Synonyms
Examples of affront in a Sentence
Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2024
Spearing his eggs Benedict with salmon, the silver-bearded star appears almost affronted when asked.
—Andrea Mandell, Peoplemag, 1 Oct. 2023
Few scholars were more affronted by the turn their discipline was taking than Uri Simonsohn and Joseph Simmons, who were then at the University of Pennsylvania, and Leif Nelson of the University of California, Berkeley.
—Noam Scheiber, New York Times, 30 Sep. 2023
Even though my children started school in mid-August, I felt somewhat affronted by the aisles of pencils, binders, and notebooks staring at me during prime pool season.
—Melissa Willets, Parents, 19 Sep. 2023
There was a point, midway through the first half, when City’s passing started to affront the crowd’s dignity: What had started as whistling turned, slowly but surely, into jeers.
—Rory Smith, New York Times, 9 May 2023
Its product refuses to entertain while its meta events such as the Oscars affront those who are naïve enough to beg it for escapism.
—Armond White, National Review, 28 Apr. 2021
Life itself, then, could affront and ridicule and even torment the provocateur: the mocker brutally mocked by personal reality.
—New York Times, 1 Apr. 2021
Other customers show up without masks, occasionally reacting belligerently or as if personally affronted when asked to put on a mask or practice social distancing.
—Anchorage Daily News, 2 June 2020
David Frum, The Atlantic, 21 Mar. 2024
And any laws or court rulings limiting the influence of religion in schools and government — such as the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1962 and 1963 decisions banning mandatory public school prayer and Bible readings — are an affront to America’s true founding.
—Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News, 23 Feb. 2024
This false victim-aggressor dichotomy frames Israel as a colonial oppressor, a gross distortion that not only undermines the truth but also emboldens terrorists like Hamas and their allies and is an affront to the historical legitimacy of Israel and the Jewish people’s right to exist.
—Russell Schwartz, Orange County Register, 8 Feb. 2024
Part of the reason why was because of the affront to what Robinson represented.
—Jackie Robinson, USA TODAY, 3 Feb. 2024
While this might seem like just a bunch of legal paperwork, doing so would be an affront to crypto industry insiders and idealists, and throw into question the status of thousands of cryptocurrencies.
—Forbes Daily, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2024
The Hamas Covenant is an affront to religious freedom and human rights.
—The San Diego Union-Tribune Staff, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Feb. 2024
To add Syria, another of Iraq’s chief adversaries, to the mix and threaten them all with punishment for 9/11—a terrorist attack perpetrated by Saudi, Emirati, Lebanese, and Egyptian members of al Qaeda, the Sunni extremist group—was even more of an affront.
—Toby Matthiesen, Foreign Affairs, 9 Feb. 2024
Gun rights supporters, who see many of the Democrats’ proposals as affronts to the Second Amendment, are emboldened by a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that set a higher legal bar for gun restrictions.
—Seth Klamann, The Mercury News, 4 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'affront.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near affront
Cite this Entry
“Affront.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affront. Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.
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