contemptible [LME] In modern English contemptible is still widely used, whereas its root word, contemn [LME], ‘to treat or regard with contempt’, which goes back to Latin contemnere ‘disregard, scorn, avoid’, is now rare and restricted to literary contexts. In 1914 the German Kaiser supposedly referred to the British army as a contemptible little army, in an order for his troops to ‘walk all over General French’s contemptible little army’. In fact the text, which became widely known and resented, appears to have been created by British propaganda. The veterans of the British Expeditionary Force of 1914 later became known as the Old Contemptibles.