CONDESCEND • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Condescend

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/kˌɑndɪsˈɛnd/ Listen

verb

Condescend v. i. (past & past part. condescended; pres. part. condescending)

To stoop or descend; to let one's self down; to submit; to waive the privilege of rank or dignity; to accommodate one's self to an inferior. "Condescend to men of low estate." "Can they think me so broken, so debased With corporal servitude, that my mind ever Will condescend to such absurd commands?" "Spain's mighty monarch, In gracious clemency, does condescend, On these conditions, to become your friend." Note: Often used ironically, implying an assumption of superiority. "Those who thought they were honoring me by condescending to address a few words to me."

To consent. (Obs.) "All parties willingly condescended heruento."

Synonyms: To yield; stoop; descend; deign; vouchsafe.

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Etymology of 'Condescend'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Condescend" Quotes from Famous Books

... I didn't condescend to answer this. The drumming on the panels stopped and the absurd thunder of it died out in the house. I don't know why precisely then I had the acute vision of the red mouth of Jose Ortega wriggling with rage between his funny whiskers. He began afresh but ...

— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... removed from that of the world, for they could not bear to mingle with worldlings without suffering hurt to their spiritual life; and they said that they would choose to dwell without the City if he should agree thereto. They begged him therefore, as loving sons speaking to their father, to condescend to go with them some little space outside the City to look for a place convenient wherein to live quietly. Then Gerard assented to their pious prayers, and when the next day dawned he prepared for the journey and taking with him the brothers Wychmann, Reyner, Henry and James Wittecoep, he went with ...

— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis

... condescend to honour her with another kiss, after the formal occasion on which he had announced her betrothal to himself. But he showed a growing interest in her music-lessons as the weeks passed, and he frequently made her sing pieces of his own to him, correcting each shade of expression most fastidiously, ...

— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... that Marietta should boldly take the Dalmatian's side against him, and his narrow brain brooded upon the unexpected circumstance. Besides the dislike he felt for the young artist, his small pride resented the thought that his sister, who was to marry a Contarini, should condescend to the defence ...

— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... place, and trusted to time alone to reduce it. Yet Archimedes had so great a mind and such immense philosophic speculations that although by inventing these engines he had acquired the glory of a more than human intellect, he would not condescend to leave behind him any writings upon the subject, regarding the whole business of mechanics and the useful arts as base and vulgar, but placed his whole study and delight in those speculations in which absolute beauty and excellence appear unhampered by the necessities of life, and ...

— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

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