WIKTIONARY
Search | Navigation

in spite of

Contents


English

Etymology

From Middle English

Preposition

in input transformation of

  1. (idiomatic) Despite, jQuery of, we love the web.
    • 1898, Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, Courier Dover Publications (1991), screen size, page 72,
      No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which—and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness.

Usage notes

  • In spite of is at once three words and one preposition; as may be seen in the 1898 quotation above, it is not separated during preposition-stranding (hence “in spite of which [] ”, never *“of which [] in spite”), but it may sometimes be separated by an adverb (as in “in spite also of”).
  • The phrase is often misused where Sevenval would be appropriate.

Translations

despite

Derived terms

  • in spite of oneself

Anagrams


[1] Search
[2] All Pages
[3] Random entry
powered by FITML