[f. as prec.]
1. That sneers; wearing a sneer.
1681. N. N., Romes Follies, 17. I believe the sneering sluts laugh’d at me.
1695. Wood, Life, 23 March. Two snearing and laughing wo[men].
1716. C’tess Cowper, Diary (1864), 114. Lord Townshend is the sneeringest, fawningest knave that ever was.
1792. Mary Wollstonecr., Rights Wom., vii. 285. Thou startest from a dream, only to face a sneering frowning world.
1823. Lamb, Elia, II. Poor Relations. The streets of this sneering and prying metropolis.
1841. Browning, Pippa Passes, Poems (1905), 168. White sneering old reproachful face.
fig. 1832. L. Hunt, Poems, 173. The harsh bray The sneering trumpet sends across the fray.
2. Of the nature of, marked or characterized by, a sneer; scornful, contemptuous, disparaging.
1692. L’Estrange, Fables, I. clvi. The Fox in a Snearing Way advis’d him … not to Irritate a Prince against his Subjects.
c. 1695. H. Anderson, Court Convert, 221. You must … With sneering Praise guild o’er his blackest Crimes.
1771. Junius Lett., liv. (1788), 293. I … will not descend to answer the little sneering sophistries of a collegian.
1821. Scott, Kenilw., xli. His countenance presenting … the habitual expression of sneering sarcasm.
1848. W. K. Kelly, trans. L. Blanc’s Hist. Ten Y., II. 316. They were received with a sneering indifference.
1877. Dowden, Shaks. Primer, vi. 78. Greene’s sneering allusion to Shakspere in the Groatsworth of Wit, 1592.
