deign

While I would never deign to speak for all critics — I’ve been around enough to know I don’t need that smoke — we’re not generally fans of inscrutability.

From Salon ● Aug. 4, 2026

Still, when she does deign to speak, there’s a dynamite scene where she dresses down Julian critically and psychologically.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026

Brown and black bears focus on the oily brains and nutritious roe of salmon when the fish are abundant and deign to chow down on whole fish only in years when salmon aren’t plentiful.

From Scientific American ● Apr. 11, 2023

And when she does deign to talk policy, she phones it in.

From Slate ● Feb. 28, 2023

She didn’t stop or deign to look at me until we were by our bunks, and she had one fist curled in her bedsheets, ready to pull herself up to the top bed.

From "The Darkest Minds" by Alexandra Bracken

Which she already has, along with all the extracurriculars required to prove she will be an asset to whichever university deigns to accept our tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, housing and fees.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2024

More than that, he also secured a prized meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a head of government who rarely deigns to trouble himself with mere foreign ministers.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2024

It’s one of the few moments when the movie deigns to deliver a conventional satisfaction.

From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2024

If the press deigns to show them to us, we’ll see evermore flagrant displays of cognitive decline, and more often.

From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2024

Though Quin Veturius is seventy-seven years old, women blush when he looks them in the eye, and men wince when he deigns to shake their hands.

From "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir

That applied to observers who deigned to take photographs of the case's famous players in the courthouse and lawyers who pushed their questions into territory the judge had previously made clear were off-limits.

From BBC ● May 15, 2026

Times were unimportant, however, as the racers who deigned to take to the Stelvio course finetuned their lines down the course in the kind of flat light that is also forecast for Saturday's medal race.

From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 2026

According to the devoted, woe to those who deigned to enjoy any aspects of "Star Trek: Discovery" and previous seasons of "Star Trek: Picard."

From Salon ● Mar. 2, 2023

Chris Pine’s rep deigned to respond to the ‘ridiculous story’ that Harry Styles spit at Pine during ‘Don’t Worry Darling’s’ Venice debut.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2022

Perhaps the universe should have deigned to provide such warnings, but scythes were no more supernatural than tax collectors in the grand scheme of things.

From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman

The love of ambiguity can feel somewhat coy—Ms. Tokarczuk gestures toward the existence of occult mysteries without deigning to fully portray them.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025

An interlude satirizing the stultifying fatuousness of the royal mission is followed by one that fawningly celebrates the magnificence of Diana deigning to speak to Welsh well-wishers.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 17, 2021

Those abundant trees – and of all the creatures, deigning somehow to glance at me and the dogs with a corner-of-the-eye curiosity, though, like the cuckoo, they never quite show their eyes, their faces.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 13, 2020

We need not, in the end, thank Hollywood, or American culture, for deigning to reflect some minuscule part of ourselves on TV, nor need we ask for more, or for better.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 18, 2020

He fussed over my condescension in deigning to learn anything about his country.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin