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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

They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but that’s only half the story.

From Salon • Dec. 14, 2025

Whether or not familiarity breeds contempt is a matter of opinion, yet a change can be as good as a rest, and this tournament is certainly different to the grind through India last autumn.

From BBC • May 31, 2024

While familiarity breeds contempt on the ice among opponents, it’s having the reverse effect for the men in stripes.

From Washington Times • Feb. 10, 2021

They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but in this case, it doesn’t do a lot more than elicit weariness.

From New York Times • Aug. 3, 2018

The proverb "familiarity breeds contempt" suggests another reason why the manners displayed at home are not, generally speaking, as good as they should be.

From How to be Happy Though Married Being a Handbook to Marriage by Hardy, Edward John