Contemn in a sentence as a verb

Yet in those huge structures and pyramidal immensities, of the builders whereof so little is known, they seemed not so much to raise sepulchres or temples to death, as to contemn and disdain it, astonishing heaven with their audacities, and looking forward with delight to their interment in those eternal piles. Of their living habitations they made little account, conceiving of them but as hospitia, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and planted them on lasting bases, defying the crumbling touches of time and the misty vaporousness of oblivion.

Contemn definitions

verb

look down on with disdain; "He despises the people he has to work for"; "The professor scorns the students who don't catch on immediately"

See also: despise scorn disdain