deigned; deigning; deigns
: to condescend reluctantly and with a strong sense of the affront to one's superiority that is involved : stoop
would not even deign to talk to him
One iconoclastic architect, for example, doesn't deign to speak of bathrooms.—
Carol Vogel
Carol Vogel
: to condescend to give or offer
never so much as deigning a glance—George Meredith
George MeredithExamples of deign in a Sentence
I wouldn't deign to answer that absurd accusation.
Recent Examples on the Web
These days, Infantino rarely deigns to attend conventional press conferences.
—Adam Crafton, New York Times, 12 July 2025
Forty years after making the generation-defining teen drama that saw his jock Andrew Clark thrown together in a Saturday detention with popular princess Molly Ringwald, nerd Anthony Michael Hall, bad boy Judd Nelson, and introvert Ally Sheedy, Estevez finally deigned to attend a cast reunion.
—Ryan Coleman, EW.com, 14 Apr. 2025
In perhaps the smoothest quarterback transition ever, Arch Manning steps in after two years of occasional starts for Quinn Ewers, who played well for Texas but wasn’t so irreplaceable that the NFL deigned to pick him in the first six rounds of last week’s draft.
—Seth Emerson, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2025
Tesla, which dissolved its public relations team in 2020 and only deigned to expand its advertising in 2024 after years of Musk acting as a one-man marketing department, has been unable or unwilling to push back against these commentaries.
—Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 7 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for deign
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Adam Crafton, New York Times, 12 July 2025
Forty years after making the generation-defining teen drama that saw his jock Andrew Clark thrown together in a Saturday detention with popular princess Molly Ringwald, nerd Anthony Michael Hall, bad boy Judd Nelson, and introvert Ally Sheedy, Estevez finally deigned to attend a cast reunion.
—Ryan Coleman, EW.com, 14 Apr. 2025
In perhaps the smoothest quarterback transition ever, Arch Manning steps in after two years of occasional starts for Quinn Ewers, who played well for Texas but wasn’t so irreplaceable that the NFL deigned to pick him in the first six rounds of last week’s draft.
—Seth Emerson, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2025
Tesla, which dissolved its public relations team in 2020 and only deigned to expand its advertising in 2024 after years of Musk acting as a one-man marketing department, has been unable or unwilling to push back against these commentaries.
—Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 7 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for deign
Cite this Entry
“Deign.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deign. Accessed 18 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
deign
verb
: to think proper to one's dignity
did not deign to reply to the rude remark
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