slights

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of slight.

   He kept a mental list of all the imagined slights against him.

   The memoir dwells on the petty slights of her early career.

   Note

   A plural that almost always means snubs: acts of deliberate neglect or discourtesy, often petty, sometimes only imagined. The older noun meaning "sleight," as in sleight of hand, is obsolete, so slights today never means tricks. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, as in "he slights his friends." Position tells them apart: after a subject it is an action, and after an article or adjective it is a set of insults.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of slight.

   The critic slights every debut author she reviews.

   He slights his oldest friends whenever a wealthier crowd appears.

   Note

   Nearly always transitive: someone slights a person, a duty, or a piece of work by giving it less attention or weight than it deserves. The verb also has a military meaning. A force that slights a castle or fort pulls it partly or wholly down so it can no longer be defended. A rarer intransitive use, "to act carelessly," takes no object at all.

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