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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

Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap.

From The American by James, Henry

My youthful respect for it has in no degree diminished, and I shall always consider it a substantial refutation of the old apothegm, "Familiarity breeds contempt."

From My Unknown Chum by Fairbanks, Charles Bullard