abusive

abusive, opprobrious, vituperative, contumelious, scurrilous apply chiefly to language or utterances and to persons as they employ such language: the words agree in meaning coarse, insulting, and contemptuous in character or utterance.

Abusive means little more than this

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abusive language

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an abusive master

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abusive satire

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All the other terms carry specific and distinctive implications.

Opprobrious suggests the imputation of disgraceful actions or of shameful conduct: it implies not only abusiveness but also severe, often unjust, condemnation

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they desecrate the shrine . . . in every conceivable way . . . and level the most opprobrious language at the goddess herself— Frazer

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Vituperative implies indulgence in a stream of insulting language especially in attacking an opponent

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the vituperative controversialists of the seventeenth century

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to restrain this employment of vituperative language— J. S. Mill

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Contumelious adds to opprobrious the implications of insolence and extreme disrespect and usually connotes the bitter humiliation of its victim

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with scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts— Shak.

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I . . . expose a chain of causes and effects that Roosevelt himself, if he were alive, would denounce as grossly contumelious to his native purity of spirit—and perhaps in all honesty— Mencken

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Scurrilous often approaches vituperative in suggesting attack and abuse but it always implies gross, vulgar, often obscenely ribald language

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they never fail to attack the passengers with all kinds of scurrilous, abusive, and indecent terms— Fielding

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may plaster his clean name with scurrilous rhymes!— Tennyson

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Analogous words: insulting, affronting, offending, outraging (see OFFEND): aspersing, maligning, vilifying (see MALIGN)

Antonyms: complimentary: respectful

Contrasted words: flattering (see corresponding noun at COMPLIMENT): panegyrical, eulogistic (see corresponding nouns at ENCOMIUM): praising, lauding, extolling, acclaiming (see PRAISE vb)