Sneer

He curled his lip in a sneer.

"No, no! That isn't the smiling face we are looking for." It was a 'smirk' either that or a 'sneer'.

There was a laughing devil in his sneer.

He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer.

The old man snorted with a sneer.

The Journal also cites Chicago Tribune music writer Greg Kot, who said the phrase took hold in the '80s, and presumably gained a more negative connotation, among indie-rock fans "having their sneer at mainstream classic rock."

Instead of a wagging tail and what looks like a happy smile that dogs project, cats sneer at us haughtily, and sometimes they seem to squint and look inscrutably wise.

He remained impassive, with a sneer on his face.

Don't sneer at that.

Don't sneer at me.

So General Oakfield's friends taunted him with having been beaten, and Blackeston's friends sneered at him for not having called the general out. Blackeston, a studious and sensitive man, felt the taunts of his friends as only a student can.

to sneer fulsome lies at a person

There was a quick scuffle within the cabin. "Leave me alone, I say, and git!" cried the cook. "Can't I be friendly without you hollerin?" sneered the miner. "You wouldn't have been 'lowed to stay round here if it hadn't been for me."

Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinked lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

He supposed then (with a sneer—M. Paul could sneer supremely, curling his lip, opening his nostrils, contracting his eyelids)—he supposed there was but one form of appeal to which I would listen [...]

And wordy attacks against slavery drew sneers from observers which were not altogether undeserved. The authors were compared to doctors who offered to a patient nothing more than invectives against the disease which consumed him.

It was a casual sneer, obviously one of a long line. There was hatred behind it, but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity that passed over the younger man's ravaged face.

During [Tucker] Carlson’s keynote, he wedged sneers at his critics for crying “racist!” in between racist remarks about [Ilhan] Omar, jeremiads against the media (“I know there’s a bunch of reporters here, so . . . screw you”), and an attack on Elizabeth Warren and her donors (“She’s a tragedy, because she’s now obsessed with racism, which is why the finance world supports her”)—all to gleeful applause.