MOCKERY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Mockery

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/mˈɑkəri/ Listen

noun

Mockery n. (pl. mockeries)

The act of mocking, deriding, and exposing to contempt, by mimicry, by insincere imitation, or by a false show of earnestness; a counterfeit appearance. "It is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery." "Grace at meals is now generally so performed as to look more like a mockery upon devotion than any solemn application of the mind to God." "And bear about the mockery of woe."

Insulting or contemptuous action or speech; contemptuous merriment; derision; ridicule. "The laughingstock of fortune's mockeries."

Subject of laughter, derision, or sport. "The cruel handling of the city whereof they made a mockery."

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Etymology of 'Mockery'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mockery" Quotes from Famous Books

... offended. The augmentation [91] of tributes and contributions he mitigated by a just and equal assessment, abolishing those private exactions which were more grievous to be borne than the taxes themselves. For the inhabitants had been compelled in mockery to sit by their own locked-up granaries, to buy corn needlessly, and to sell it again at a stated price. Long and difficult journeys had also been imposed upon them; for the several districts, instead of being allowed to supply the nearest winter ...

— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... the white-hair'd men stood up, And princes waited for my speech, as wait The fields in summer for the latter rain. But now, the children of base men spring up And push away my feet, and make my name A bye-word and a mockery, which was erst Set to the harp in song. Because my wealth God hath resumed, they who ne'er dared to claim Equality with even the lowest ones Who watch'd my flock, they whom my menials scorned, Dwellers in hovels, feeding like the brutes On roots and bushes of the wilderness, Despise ...

— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... falsely conceived to be their dearest and best black friends. They had played with them as if they were great dolls; they had been driven about like shuttlecocks; they had been to them first a gazing stock, and afterwards were their laughing stock, and, perhaps, not unlikely their mockery; they had been their admiration, their buffoons, their wonder and their scorn, a by-word and a jest. Else why this double dealing, this deceit, this chicanery, these hollow professions? "Why," as Richard Lander says, "did they entrap us in this manner? Why have they led us ...

— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... than this sojourn with persons whom she in every way respected—with whom there was not the least temptation to exhibit her mere dexterities. In London, during this past season, she had sometimes talked as a young, clever and admired girl is prone to do; always to the mockery of her sager self when looking back on such easy triumphs. How very easy it was to shine in London drawing-rooms, no one knew better. Here, in the country stillness, in this beautiful old house sacred to sincerity of heart and mind, to aim at "smartness" would indeed have been to condemn ...

— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... completest expression of the modern conception of structural affinity. If Virchow had not been as ignorant of the true significance and method of systematic morphology as he is of its progress and scientific contents, he must certainly have known this, and then he would surely have withheld his mockery of all these grave phylogenetic studies as "personal crotchets" and ...

— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

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