condescend

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English

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Etymology

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From Middle English condescenden, from Old French condescendre, from Late Latin condēscendere (“to let one's self down, stoop, condescend”), from Latin con- (“together”) + dēscendere, present active infinitive of dēscendō (“I come down”); see descend.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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condescend (third-person singular simple present condescends, present participle condescending, simple past and past participle condescended)

  1. (intransitive) To come down from one's superior position; to deign (to do something).
    The boss condescended not to sack him after much persuassion from his coworkers.
  2. (intransitive) To treat (someone) as though inferior; to be patronizing (toward someone); to talk down (to someone).
    • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter XIV, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
      I admire that admiration which the genteel world sometimes extends to the commonalty. There is no more agreeable object in life than to see Mayfair folks condescending.
    • 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XXIX, in Great Expectations […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC:
      "You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart."
    • 1880, Charlotte M. Yonge, chapter 7, in Clever Woman of the Family:
      Ermine never let any one be condescending to her, and conducted the conversation with her usual graceful good breeding.
    • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter VIII, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
      At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy ; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality into pabulum.
  3. (transitive, rare, nonstandard) To treat (someone) as though inferior; to be patronizing toward (someone); to talk down to (someone).
    • 2007, Damian Westfall, Bennett's Cow-Eyed Girl, →ISBN:
      “I didn't mean to condescend you, Mr. Shreck.”
    • 2010, Jaron Lee Knuth, Demigod, →ISBN:
      “I'm not trying to condescend you, Ben.”
    • 2014, Greg Kalleres, Honky, page 31:
      THOMAS. [...] Does my anger deserve your condescension?
      ANDIE. I wasn't condescending you; I was just asking.
      THOMAS. No. You said “angry black man.” Like my anger only exists in a stereotype. That's condescending.
  4. (intransitive, obsolete) To consent, agree.
  5. (intransitive, obsolete) To come down.

Usage notes

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  • "Condescend" is a catenative verb that takes the to infinitive. See Appendix:English catenative verbs
  • In sense “to talk down”, the derived participial adjective condescending (and corresponding adverb condescendingly) are more common than the verb itself.
  • In older usage, "condescend" could be used non-pejoratively (in a sense similar to that of treating someone as inferior) to describe the action of those who socialized in a friendly way with their social inferiors. Now that the concept of social inferiors has largely fallen out of currency, so has this non-pejorative sense. Thus, in w:Pride_and_Prejudice, a character could say of another, "I need not say you will be delighted with her. She is all affability and condescension.”

Synonyms

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Translations

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Further reading

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