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(This is re-purposed from my lesson on proverbs).
Today's vocabulary is a proverb. A proverb is a wise saying that gives you advice about how to live your life. Today's proverb is: familiarity breeds contempt. It's one phrase, but it consists of three words: familiarity, breeds, contempt. All three of these words are rather advanced vocabulary, so let's talk about each of them. Familiarity is a noun. The adjective form is familiar, as in: I am familiar with him or I am familiar with that book. Familiarity as a noun means to know something or someone well. So to know something or someone well. Breeds. Breeds literally means to make babies. So, for example, imagine you have a mother dog and a father dog and they breed puppies--they make puppies. It also has a metaphorical meaning which means to cause something to happen or to produce something. Contempt. Contempt is similar to dislike. It means to not respect someone or something because you don't like it. So familiarity breeds contempt means if you know something well, or if you know someone well, breeds, it will cause you contempt, to not respect it. So if you know something well, or if you know someone well, if you know someone well it will cause you to not respect them. For example, imagine you have a new friend and at first, you think that friend is very cool. He's very awesome. You respect him a lot. But the more you get to know him, the more you begin to realize that actually he has a lot of bad points that you didn't realize before and then eventually you lose your respect for him as you get to know him better. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or here's another very common example: have you ever had the experience where you were very good friends with someone and you got on quite well, and then you decided to become roommates with that person and live together with that person in the same apartment and by the end of the year you completely hate that person? You used to really like them, but after one year of being very close with them all the time, you found out all their annoying habits, all the annoying things that they did, and it turned out that you-- this turned into dislike for them. So again, familiarity breeds contempt. Here's one more example. Imagine this situation: “When I first saw Tom, I thought he was the coolest guy ever. But then I became friends with him, and I realized he was really stupid. I guess it's true what they say: familiarity breeds contempt.
So let me know if you agree or disagree with this proverb and if you have any experience with familiarity breeding contempt, and also let me know if you have any similar proverbs in your own language.
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