Demeaning behavior is that which is intended to cause a severe loss in the dignity and respect of someone; words or actions intended to debase, lower, degrade, discredit or devalue a person.
You are demeaning your sister or brother if you run their underwear up a flagpole. A teacher could demean a student by saying "You're stupid!" To demean is to insult: no one wants to be demeaned. Insulting language is often called demeaning. We can also say a bad president demeaned his office.
Use of abusive and/or insulting language (written, electronic or verbal). Spreading false information or malicious rumors. Behavior, language, or gestures that frighten, humiliate, belittle, or degrade, including criticism or feedback that is delivered with yelling, screaming, threats, implicit threats, or insults.
Dealing with Demeaning Behaviour
Set boundaries: set boundaries for how you expect to be treated. Be clear: Specify the specific behaviours that appear to represent demeaning behaviour. Seek support: Talk to friends, family members, or a colleague about what you're experiencing to gather support during difficult times.
The Psychology Behind Condescending Behaviour
Often, the root of condescension is insecurity. Those who aren't confident in their abilities will look for opportunities to prove their superiority and take comfort in it.
Condescending is always used negatively to imply rudeness or disrespect. It's especially used to describe someone's tone when speaking. Telling someone who's sad to snap out of it and smile, because they're prettier that way, isn't helpful.
Common behaviors include bullying, yelling, manipulating and belittling. Employees in a toxic work environment may be nervous to speak their minds, raise concerns or share thoughts because they are worried about being rejected or reprimanded.
Unacceptable behaviour
Aggressive or abusive behavior may include: threats of physical harm or actual physical harm. behaviour or language (verbal or written) that may cause staff to feel offended, afraid, threatened or abused. insulting or degrading language.
On this page you'll find 63 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to demean, such as: belittle, debase, degrade, despise, disparage, and abase.
Some common synonyms of belittle are decry, depreciate, and disparage. While all these words mean "to express a low opinion of," belittle usually suggests a contemptuous or envious attitude.
Narcissists belittle others because they have their own insecurities, fears and flaws, and are afraid of having them exposed to others. In making hurtful comments to others, they reinforce their own feelings of importance and hide the low self-esteem and self-worth that may be lurking within.
A refusal to listen or even discuss an issue you've brought up is one of the most toxic behaviors of all. Stonewalling is frustrating, confusing, and demeaning all at once. After all, it is unrealistic to expect that two people are never going to want change.
Emotional and psychological abuse can take many forms, including belittling, which can manifest as judging, humiliating, criticizing, trivializing or telling hurtful jokes. But belittling is no joking matter. It's a tactic often used by abusers to make their victims feel small, unimportant or disrespected.
Definitions of demeaning. adjective. causing awareness of your shortcomings. synonyms: humbling, humiliating, mortifying undignified. lacking dignity.
Patronizing behavior is any form of talking down to someone from the position of projected authority. You've likely heard the term mansplaining—in which a man explains something to a person of another gender that's obvious or that they already know and might even have expertise in.
Rudeness, particularly with respect to speech, is necessarily confrontational at its core. Forms of rudeness include acting inconsiderate, insensitive, deliberately offensive, impolite, obscenity, profanity and violating taboos such as deviancy.
Address someone with insulting condescension, patronize, as in Just because she's editor-in-chief doesn't give her the right to talk down to her staff, or Children hate teachers who speak down to them.
Condescension is an insulting way of talking to other people, as if they were stupid or ignorant. Condescension is rude and patronizing. Treating someone with condescension is the opposite of treating them with respect.
It comes from the Late Latin condēscendere, which means “to stoop” and derives from the Latin dēscendere, “to descend.” Condescending always involves stooping or descending to the level of those considered inferior. A person who condescends to another usually isn't outright insulting them.