dispraise
/dɪsˈpreɪz
/noun [mass noun]
Censure; criticism: this engraving has on occasion elicited dispraise for Raphael...
- This patriotic purpose is reinforced with dispraise of the current Italianized English fashion.
- It is a garment of dispraise left over for evil-doers in general.
- Dispraise too was a normal folklore genre in Imerina, as can be seen in some hainteny that parody praise poems.
verb [with object] archaic
Express censure or criticism of: men cannot praise Dryden without dispraising Coleridge...
- Because we come to like being praised and to hate being dispraised, praise and dispraise come to have an important secondary function.
- There is another life story too, woven in with Isherwood's - that of his younger brother Richard, from the start dispraised in favour of the idolised Christopher.
- That may sound as though I'm intending to dispraise the book, but to the contrary; I think it's a fine piece of work in lots of ways.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French despreisier, based on late Latin depreciare (see depreciate).