Something that keeps on coming up in my internal monologues is the issue of when to use despite and when to use in spite of. I didn’t know of any difference between the two, but there’ve been a lot of words that I didn’t know meant different things until I’d already spent years confusing them. (Thinking that jocular meant “having the traits of a jock” is foremost in my mind, but there’s also the flaunt/flout confusion that I was a victim of until midway through college.)
So what if I was making a fool of myself by confounding despite and in spite of as well? Nah, I figured, I’ve been using them interchangeably for 20-odd years. They couldn’t be different; I’d've noticed. But then I read an article containing this sentence:
“Despite, or perhaps in spite of, the screenings, an ad hoc coalition of more than a dozen disabilities groups held a conference call on the weekend to lay the groundwork for at least one protest in every state starting this week.”
Well, poop. Operating under the assumption that writer was not injecting her own internal word-choice debate into the beginning of the sentence, I concluded that there must be a difference between despite and in spite of. 20-odd years of confidence in my spite-usage down the drain.
I dutifully crawled the Internet, searching for the difference between them, desperately hoping to save myself a lampooning the next time I said one but meant the other. But as it turns out, no one else seems to believe they were different. I even checked the OED, where I was greeted with the following definition of despite: “In spite of.” Nothing more. All right, case closed; they’re the same.
My mind was set at ease for a solid couple of seconds. I hadn’t been making a fool of myself on this topic, hooray. But then I realized that what we have here is a full-fledged grammatical mystery. What could the writer have been thinking when she set up the opposition of despite and in spite of? Since they’re the same, might she have been thinking of some other phrase instead of in spite of? What could this mysterious phrase be?
If this were a proper detective story, I’d introduce a number of potential target phrases, and one by one whittle them down, excluding possibilities with a heartfelt rhetorical flourish before finally pointing my magnifying-glass-wielding hand, extending an accusatory finger, and naming the offender. But, c’mon, I write too long-windedly as it is. So let’s jump to the accusation: it was the writer (or the editor), with the backspace key, in the aforementioned sentence.
My guess is that in despite of was the target phrase, but then someone looked at that and said “Oops, that’s mixing my constructions,” and removed the de-. In despite of means “in defiance of, in order to spite”, which to me seems about what would be intended. I was completely unaware of the existence of this phrase, so if I’d been editing the story, I’d certainly have clipped off the de-, although I probably would have changed it to in order to spite or out of spite for. But that’s just picking nits. So thank you, stupid news article about a stupid movie; you actually taught me something about the English language.
Summary: despite and in spite of are interchangeable, but their combination in despite of means something else entirely.
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August 15, 2008 at 5:56 am
JJM
I wonder whether the writer viewed “in spite of” as simply more emphatic and forceful than “despite”?
That is to say, the writer felt that “despite the screenings” projected a relatively neutral sense of “notwithstanding the screenings, we’ll go ahead” whereas “in spite of the screenings” conjured up a more wilful and deliberate idea of “the screenings be damned, we’ll show them”.
Just a thought.
August 15, 2008 at 8:13 am
Gabe
A less well-formed version of that idea came into my head when I first encountered the sentence; that’s what made me wonder if there really was a difference between the constructions. But if that’s what she was going for, the author ought to have used “in despite of” instead of “in spite of”, going by dictionary definitions.
But that’s a good question. Does “in spite of” seem more forceful/emphatic than “despite” to anyone else? Was I too brutish in declaring that “despite” and “in spite of” were identical?
August 15, 2008 at 9:34 am
Erin
I’ve never heard the phrase “in despite of”, but I have definitely seen the “despite, or in spite of” construction more than once. I agree with JJM’s interpretation, that the “spite” has a more forceful connotation than “despite”, despite their common root. :)
August 15, 2008 at 9:55 am
Jan Freeman
In years of editing, I don’t think I ever saw “in despite of” in everyday journalism. For me, the expected construction would be “Despite, or perhaps because of. . . . ” So perhaps it’s an aborted edit, where (say) the editor set out to reverse the order of “Because of, or in spite of”, and got distracted halfway through? It will be interesting to see if it gets changed.
August 15, 2008 at 3:20 pm
CarlRoberts
Hrmmm…
August 26, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Gabe
Perhaps it’s that “in spite of” means the same as “despite” when only one is present, but if the two are presented in opposition, “in spite of” is more forceful. I guess that, having returned to this after a week of vacation, I’m now thinking that people can think of “in spite of” as a compromise between “despite” and “in order to spite”. “Despite” does strike me as a somewhat more neutral word than “in spite of”. And, following up Erin’s search, there’re 500-odd pages with “despite, or perhaps in spite of” in them. I therefore retract my previous thinking that “in despite of” was ever intended and instead embrace the idea of “in spite of” being marginally more forceful.
The surprising thing about this to me, though, is that “in spite of, or perhaps despite” does occasionally occur. I can’t figure out what that’s supposed to mean.
August 27, 2008 at 9:33 am
Teddy
I agree with Jan in that my initial reaction was the author intended to say “Despite, or perhaps because of.” Wouldn’t it be possible to gauge from the rest of the article whether that interpretation is more likely than “in despite of,” which I also never knew existed but am quite intrigued by. Any appetite for some sleuthing on that one? My hunch is that the writer intended “despite, or perhaps because of” but just messed up.
November 11, 2008 at 10:36 am
November Links « Literal-Minded
[...] What’s the difference between in spite of and despite. When I taught ESL, I told students they were interchangeable. But Gabe Doyle at Motivated Grammar made me nervous when he wrote, “I didn’t know of any difference between the two, but there’ve been a lot of words that I didn’t know meant different things until I’d already spent years confusing them.” So he went and found out whether in spite of and despite actually synonyms. [...]
November 17, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Allison
I am intrigued to find this blog, being an editor and a (prescriptivist, I’m afraid) fellow grammarian. I just have one note for you. Commas go inside quotation marks. Just thought you might want to know, although maybe not…At any rate, I enjoy your blog.
November 17, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Gabe
Allison: I appreciate the advice, but I don’t punctuate that way. I personally subscribe to British punctuation rules, wherein the comma placement depends on whether you have a complete sentence or not. You’ll note that the comma is inside the quotation marks here when the quotation is a complete sentence and outside otherwise. I always thought it a bit untrue to the quotation to put new punctuation inside the quotation marks, but that’s just me.
November 18, 2008 at 7:57 am
Allison
Well, that’s interesting. Are you British?? Otherwise, I would recommend following American grammar rules. But, that’s just me. :-)
November 18, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Gabe
Allison: Fair counterpoint. I owe you an apology, because my previous comment was worded a bit tersely and snottily — the dangers of posting comments at the end of a long day. The point I intended to make was that Americans are not beholden to American punctuation rules any more than we are beholden to the apostrophication rules of the AP Stylebook, or Strunk & White, or whomever. It’s all a matter of style, and the style I use, while less common here, is standard elsewhere. There are certainly arguments in favor of the American rule, the most prominent probably being its simplicity. But the British rule has its own rationale: that the punctuation choices are a bit truer to the original. The key point that I’d hoped to convey with my bungled final sentence was that I find the advantages of the British system to outweigh those of the American system. Other people are free to weigh the advantages themselves and draw their own conclusions, and my usage is strictly my own.
November 20, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Allison
You make a good point as well. Style is somewhat subjective (much to my chagrin! lol). An excellent example is Chicago style vs. APA style. If it were up to me, there would be ONE style — everywhere. One can dream. :-)
February 5, 2009 at 12:46 am
Rick S
In my idiolect, “despite” and “in spite of” are always interchangeable when the intent is to indicate that what follows is in seeming contradiction to what might be expected. But if there were actually any feeling of spitefulness involved, the choice would be “in spite of” or, rarely and only if I’m comfortable using a particularly formal and somewhat archaic register, “in despite of”. For me, then, there is a three-level hierarchy, with “despite” being the weakest and “in despite of” being the strongest. “In spite of” wiggles between weak and moderate, an ambiguity so subtle that it’s possibly only meaningful to me.
February 11, 2009 at 2:19 am
AJH
I just stumbled across this blog while looking for the answer to this exact question. My feelings on the subject are like what JJM and others have said. Maybe this is an example of two terms having the same denotation but a different connotation.
I am also familiar with the phrase “despite, or in spite of, . . .” I always assumed there was a difference, otherwise why would it be so common to juxtapose the terms? “In spite of” seems more active to me, whereas “despite” is sort of passive. Although the following are all listed as synonyms for “despite,” I think that “despite” is more accurately replaced with “notwithstanding” or “regardless of” whereas “in spite of” seems more similar to “in the face of.” Like, if you do X despite Y, you are doing X sort of disregarding Y. But if you do X in spite of Y, it’s more rebellious or causal… you might not have done X if not for Y but they are opposites. For example, If “I am carefree despite, or in spite of, my analytical nature” then I am, at first glance, carefree yet analytical, but at second glance am carefree as an attempt to escape my analytical nature. Of course, I have no authority to back up this interpretation.
My dictionary gives “in spite of” as a synonym for “despite,” but gives “in spite of oneself” as a separate phrase meaning “although one did not want or expect to do so.” I think that is how I always interpreted “in spite of” (without the “oneself”)
March 18, 2009 at 5:19 am
Rob
I used to think that they were interchangeable. Right now, though, I’m busy helping a second language student revise an essay. She wrote:
“In spite of his kindness, he is definitely wrong.”
Instinctively, I felt that:
“Despite his kindness, he is definitely wrong.”
might be better – but I have absolutely no idea why! Am I missing something? Is it perhaps the ‘definitely’ that changes things? Or am I wrong, and either one is OK?
April 10, 2009 at 12:39 pm
2nd Cup Linda
I was in the process of writing a small newspaper column and realized that I wrote “in spite of” twice, so I began thinking of a suitable alternative. All I could come up with on my own was “despite,” which caused the voice in my head to cry “foul!” So I took a deter and began searching for the difference between the two and landed here. I’m delighted to have found your site, but I still have not found a suitable replacement for “in spite of,” despite your timely post!
April 10, 2009 at 12:43 pm
2nd Cup Linda
Um, “detour,” not “deter.” I am a former spelling bee champ in the horrible clench of menopausal mind fog. My apologies.
June 2, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Janeca Racho
In my News Writing class back in college, my professor, who also happens to be a newspaper editor, cleared this mystery for my classmates and me.
According to him, IN SPITE OF is used when the sentence expresses a positive or favorable thought.
Example: In spite of the torrential rain and flooded streets, we still made it to the game.
On the other hand, DESPITE is used when the sentence expresses a negative thought.
Example: Despite leaving the house three hours before the game, we still missed the first half.
I hope that helped clear things a bit but seeing that over the years I haven’t found any reference or grammar book that confirms the above rule, I really can’t set it in stone. Nonetheless, I’ve been following it ever since.
June 2, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Rob
Janeca, that makes sense and seems to work with my example, too. Thank you!
July 7, 2009 at 11:49 pm
MikeyC
Does that contradict this?
“- in spite of
preposition : in defiance or contempt of
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged.”
July 7, 2009 at 11:50 pm
MikeyC
My previous post was for Janeca.
July 23, 2009 at 7:28 am
Janeca
I believe it doesn’t. I went back to my previous example with the definition you provided in mind and the sentence still made sense to me. I could always be wrong, though. Like I said, I’ve never found an official grammar rule to support what my professor taught us. For all I know, he could’ve just made it up himself. ;-)