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• Familiarity breeds contempt
  Familiarity breeds contempt

  The better we know people, the more likely we are to find fault with them.
• familiarity breeds contempt
  familiarity breeds contempt

  Long experience of someone or something can make one so aware of the faults as to be scornful. For example, Ten years at the same job and now he hates it—familiarity breeds contempt. The idea is much older, but the first recorded use of this expression was in Chaucer's Tale of Melibee (c. 1386).

Familiarity breeds contempt

Cultural  

1. The better we know people, the more likely we are to find fault with them.

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familiarity breeds contempt Idioms  

1. Long experience of someone or something can make one so aware of the faults as to be scornful. For example, Ten years at the same job and now he hates it—familiarity breeds contempt. The idea is much older, but the first recorded use of this expression was in Chaucer's Tale of Melibee (c. 1386).

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Example Sentences

Familiarity breeds contempt, but no one argues with each other like family.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 16, 2021

Familiarity breeds contempt, and so it makes sense that the reviled Blue Devils squads of yore were packed with four-year players like Christian Laettner and Shelden Williams.

From Slate • Mar. 20, 2019

"Familiarity breeds contempt – that's a good way of saying it," Haynie says.

From US News • Oct. 4, 2016

There is an old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt."

From Healthful Sports for Boys by Rochefort, Alfred

With me, as with most, something of the feeling implied in the adage, "Familiarity breeds contempt," had impaired my faith in the practical efficacy of prayer.

From The Cold Snap 1898 by Bellamy, Edward