"Belittle! — What an expression! — It may be an elegant one in Virginia, and even perhaps perfectly intelligible; but for our part, all we can do is, to guess at its meaning. — For shame, Mr. Jefferson!" — The London Review, August 1787
About the Word:
Jefferson!" — The London Review, August 1787 Thomas Jefferson was not yet president when he was scolded by a British reviewer for his coinage of the word belittle, but the reaction to this word was so overheated that it deserves a mention nonetheless. Jefferson had recently published his two-volume work Notes on the State of Virginia (it was released privately in the early 1780s, and published publicly in 1787), a book which contained the line "So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side of the Atlantic."
An anonymous critic for the London Review seethed when he encountered this word. In addition to his splenetic jibe quoted above, he wrote "Freely, good sir, we will forgive you all your attacks, impotent as they are illiberal, upon our national character; but for the future, spare—O spare, we beseech you, our mother-tongue!"
Definition:
: to speak slightingly of
: disparage : to cause (a person or thing) to seem little or less
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