Derisible

//dɪˈɹɪzɪb(ə)l// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Deserving derision (“treatment with disdain or contempt”).

    "I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was his hopeless and derisible inferior."

Example

More examples

"I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was his hopeless and derisible inferior."

Etymology

PIE word *de From Latin *dērīsibilis (compare Italian derisibile (“that may be derided”)) + English -ible (a variant of -able (suffix meaning ‘able or fit to be done’ forming adjectives)). *Dērīsibilis is derived from dērīsus + -ibilis (a variant of -bilis (suffix forming adjectives indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon)); while dērīsus is the perfect passive participle of dērīdeō (“to laugh at, make fun of, mock, deride”), from dē- (intensifying prefix) + rīdeō (“to laugh; to laugh at, mock, ridicule”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wert- (“to rotate; to turn”), in the sense of turning the mouth to smile).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.