Trending: β€˜contempt,’ β€˜held in contempt’

Lookups for 'held in contempt' spiked 4,300% on April 25, 2022

Why are people looking up the words contempt and held in contempt?

Lookups for contempt and held in contempt spiked on April 25, 2022, when former president Donald Trump was found to be in contempt of court for failing to turn over documents requested by New York's attorney general.

Trump is being investigated by the attorney general in a civil case to determine whether he inflated the value of his assets when seeking bank loans. Trump's lawyers have said that they could not find the requested documents in the case, which was opened in 2019, and a New York judge assessed a penalty of $10,000 per day for not providing them.

What do the words contempt and held in contempt mean?

Contempt in this context means:

: willful disobedience to or open disrespect of a court, judge, or legislative body

Contempt of court is defined as:

: willful disobedience or open disrespect of the orders, authority, or dignity of a court or judge acting in a judicial capacity by disruptive language or conduct or by failure to obey the court's orders

Held in contempt is defined as:

: considered by the court to have broken the law by disobeying or disrespecting the judge

Where do the words contempt and held in contempt come from?

Contempt is a word that was borrowed from French and Latin, from the Latin word meaning "to show no respect for" or "to despise."

Citations

A New York judge on Monday held Donald J. Trump in contempt of court for failing to turn over documents to the state’s attorney general, an extraordinary rebuke of the former president.
β€”The New York Times, April 25, 2022

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.


Name That Flower

Spell It

Hear a word and type it out. How many can you get right?

TAKE THE QUIZ
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.

Pick the best words!

PLAY
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!