Synonyms for abusive
- adjective
Most common
All synonyms
Adjective
1. Offensive — prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful…
offensive, insulting, scurrilous, vituperative, rude, invective, injurious, insolent, harmful, defamatory, outrageous, foul, opprobrious, condemnatory, ribald, reproachful, denunciatory, calumnious, damnatory, affrontive, vile, vulgar
Other
Definitions
- adj. 1
Prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous.
All they could ever do was to shout abusive inanities at me.
Related words
- Other spellings
- abusious
Example sentences
- offensive The US staged a land offensive on Iraq from Kuwait.
- insulting The word fugusha ("disabled") might be insulting.
Popularity over time
| Word | 1850 → 2019 | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| abusive | rising | |
| offensive | steady | |
| insulting | rising | |
| scurrilous | steady | |
| vituperative | steady |
Use in printed books, per decade from 1850 to 2019.
By length
- 4 letters
- rude1, foul1, vile1
- 5 letters
- harsh1
- 6 letters
- vulgar2, ribald2
- 7 letters
- harmful2
- 8 letters
- insolent3
- 9 letters
- offensive3, insulting3, injurious4, invective3, damnatory
- 10 letters
- outrageous3, defamatory5, scurrilous3, calumnious, affrontive
- 11 letters
- reproachful, opprobrious
- 12 letters
- vituperative5, condemnatory, denunciatory
The small number after each word is its number of syllables (vulgar2 = 2 syllables).