abusive

adjective

Being physically or emotionally injurious; characterized by repeated violence or other abuse.

Prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous.

Wrongly used; perverted; misapplied; unjust; illegal.

(archaic) Tending to misuse; practising or containing abuse.

(obsolete) Tending to deceive; fraudulent.

(archaic) Catachrestic.

Roots

abab- · Latin · away from utor-us · Latin · use

Synonyms for abusive

opprobriousadj scurrilousadj vituperativeadj misappliedv insultingadj hurtfuladj rudeadj slanderousadj derogatoryadj obsceneadj revilingv

Synonyms & related words for abusive

Find synonyms, related words, and the definition of abusive — including opprobrious, scurrilous, vituperative, misapplied, insulting, hurtful. Dendril is a free visual thesaurus that shows them on an interactive map where stronger matches sit closer to the center — no signup, no ads.

Words related to abusive

Explore words related to abusive — words associated with it, words that go with it, and its nearest matches in meaning. Related words include nonabusive, abusiveness, abusing, abusively, abuses, vituperatively, abuser, abused. Click any word to make it the center of the map and keep exploring the web of connections.

Synonyms for abusive

Common synonyms for abusive include opprobrious, scurrilous, vituperative, misapplied, insulting, hurtful, rude, slanderous — words that share a close meaning. Hover or tap any word on the map for its definition and part of speech.

Where does abusive come from?

The word abusive breaks down into 2 roots of Latin origin: ab-, from Latin ab (“away from”); and -us, from Latin utor (“use”). Explore each root to see other English words built from the same source.