grammaticality - Is it "despite" or "despite of"?


Should I always use 'despite' instead of 'despite of'?



Answer



As JSBangs and Kosmonaut have pointed out already, despite is the way to go in contemporary English.


However, despite of is not incorrect per se; it's just a bit dated. Look no further than at the works of William Shakespeare:




  • "Grace is grace, despite of all controversy: as, for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace." (Measure for Measure).

  • "The scar that will, despite of cure, remain" (Rape of Lucrece).

  • "Some good I mean to do, / Despite of mine own nature" (King Lear)

  • "but my fair name, / Despite of death that lives upon my grave, / To dark dishonour's use thou shalt not have." (Richard II).

  • "So thou through windows of thine age shall see / Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time." (Sonnet III).

  • "Therefore, despite of fruitless chastity, / Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns, / That on the earth would breed a scarcity / And barren dearth of daughters and of sons, / Be prodigal" (Venus and Adonis).

  • "For then despite of space I would be brought, / From limits far remote where thou dost stay." (Sonnet XLIV)

  • ...



What's more, that quirky fella didn't stop at that. Just look at this horrible English:




  • "O, a good wish upon you! You will try in time, in despite of a fall." (As You Like It)

  • "But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise, / Who in despite of view is pleased to dote;" (Sonnet CXLI)

  • "No, in despite of sense and secrecy, / Unpeg the basket on the house's top, / Let the birds fly" (Hamlet)

  • "How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe, / And had his highness in his infancy / Crowned in Paris in despite of foes?" (Henry VI, Part II)

  • "Deposed he shall be, in despite of all." (Henry VI, Part III)

  • "Yet, Warwick, in despite of all mischance, / Of thee thyself and all thy complices, / Edward will always bear himself as king" (Henry VI, Part III)

  • "Then, in despite of brooded watchful day, / I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts" (King John)



I (well, he) could go on, but you get the idea.


Now let's head over to the States and look at what the Corpus of Historical American English has to offer:


DESPITE OF        272
IN DESPITE OF     169

That's not much, but not exactly nothing, either. The most interesting part is the distribution by year. A picture is worth a thousand words:


Stats


(X axis: year, Y axis: incidences per million words)


Now, before you forget where I started, I will add that the Corpus also has a whopping 24305 cites for just "despite", and 20802 cites for "in spite of". So a more accurate picture would be this:


Stats


Note how this also tells an interesting story about despite vs. in spite of.


Back to the UK, the British National Corpus has 2695 cites for "in spite of", 14356 cites for "despite", but only 3 cites for "(in) despite of".


So the bottom line is this: by all means do use despite (or in spite of). However, if you accidentally use despite of or even in despite of and someone corrects you, you can now at least pretend that you were emulating Shakespeare.



Edit: Interestingly enough, Merriam-Webster simply says that in despite of is a synonym for in spite of and leaves it at that. I also totally forgot to look it up in the most obvious place: Etymonline. Here's what it has to say:



despite [...] The preposition (early 15c.) is short for in despite of (late 13c.), a loan-translation of Old French en despit de "in contempt of."



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