Worthy of being treated with disdain or showing a tendency toward disdain.
Formed from 'dain' (an archaic word meaning to disdain or scorn, from Old French 'deignier') combined with the suffix '-ful' (meaning full of). The word emerged in Middle English when '-ful' was actively used to create adjectives from verbs.
This word shows how English writers once happily attached '-ful' to almost any verb to make an adjective—we've largely stopped this habit, which is why 'dainful' sounds so strange to modern ears even though the pattern is ancient.
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