breed

A type or group of people that is markedly superior to or unique from most others. Citizens from that state have long considered themselves a breed apart from the rest of the country, and there has been a growing movement to gain secession in recent years. Watching her performance on the field yesterday, it is clearer than ever that the team's captain is truly a breed apart.

slang To have several babies in a short period of time. (Rabbits are known to produce a large number of offspring very rapidly.) I can't believe my sister is pregnant for the fourth time in five years. She and her husband just breed like rabbits!

Of the weather, to become overcast. I wouldn't go outside right now—it looks to be breeding up a storm.

Repeated exposure to someone or something often creates a contentious relationship. A: "Those two teams have built up quite a rivalry over the years." B: "They play in the same division, and familiarity breeds contempt." I'm afraid it's true when they say that familiarity breeds contempt, because I've been stuck with Larry in the apartment all week, and I'm absolutely sick of him.

proverb If you treat someone with anger, malice, or hatred, it will typically cause them to behave in a similar way to yourself or to others. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and treat people as kindly as possible, even if they've wronged me in the past. Hate only ever breeds hate, after all. It just feels like people only want to attack and tear down anyone with an opposing opinion these days. But hate breeds hate, and all we seem to be getting is an ever-rising sea of ill will between each other.

proverb If you show love, kindness, and goodwill toward someone, it will typically cause them to behave in a similar way to yourself or to others. I feel like we as a people are losing the notion that love breeds love these days, choosing instead to attack or criticize other people as our default reaction. I've always taken the stance that love breeds love, and, in my own experience, anyway, it has always borne out to be true.

Prov. People do not respect someone they know well enough to know his or her faults. The movie star doesn't let anyone get to know him, because he knows that familiarity breeds contempt.

Prov. People tend to raise children who are like them; something tends to give rise to things that resemble it. Jill: I think Fred's little boy is going to be just as disagreeable as Fred. Jane: That's no surprise. Like breeds like.

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).

If you say that familiarity breeds contempt, you mean that if you know someone or something very well, you can easily become bored with them and stop treating them with respect. Of course, it's often true that familiarity breeds contempt, that we're attracted to those who seem so different from those we know at home. It is second-year drivers — when familiarity breeds contempt for road rules — that are the problem. Note: Other nouns are sometimes used instead of contempt. Familiarity breeds inattention. Typically, family members are so convinced they know what another family member is going to say that they don't bother to listen.

To stir up trouble for oneself.

To become cloudy.

Overexposure to or knowing something or someone too thoroughly can turn liking into hostility. The idea behind this expression dates from ancient times—the Roman writer Publilius Syrus used it about 43 b.c.—and approximately twelve hundred years later Pope Innocent III repeated it, also in Latin. The first record of it in English appeared in Nicholas Udall’s translation of Erasmus’s sayings (1548): “Familiaritye bringeth contempt.” Later writers often stated it with humor or irony, notably Mark Twain in his unpublished diaries (Notebooks, ca. 1900): “Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.”