Word Finder - insult

definition

Action or form of speech deliberately intended to be rude; a particular act or statement having this effect.

synonyms

• affront
• diss
• insultation
• offence
• offense
• pejorative
• slam
• slight
• slur

definition

Something that causes offence (for example, by being of an unacceptable quality).

example

The way the orchestra performed tonight was an insult to my ears.

synonyms

• disgrace
• outrage

definition

Something causing disease or injury to the body or bodily processes; the injury so caused.

definition

An assault or attack; (specifically) an assault, attack, or onset carried out without preparation.

definition

An act of leaping upon.

definition

To be insensitive, insolent, or rude to (somebody); to affront or demean (someone).

definition

To assail, assault, or attack; (specifically) to carry out an assault, attack, or onset without preparation.

definition

To behave in an obnoxious and superior manner (against or over someone).

definition

To leap or trample upon.

Don't insult them by refusing their hospitality.

I don't mean to insult them.

The goddess, enraged at the insult, asks her father Anu to avenge her.

A gross case of insult offered by a Frenchman to a Sicilian woman led to the massacre at Palermo, and the like scenes followed elsewhere.

Rhyn eyed him, suspecting it was an insult, while Gabriel recalled how polished Andre was.

Before another insult could leave her lips, he kissed her, a commanding, intense kiss.

It is best not to mention anything that could be misconstrued as an insult.

Avoid joking about anything that might be mistaken for an insult.

On account of an incident that happened at Dundee - his slaughter of a young Englishman named Selby, for an insult offered to him - he is said to have been outlawed, and so driven into rebellion against the English.

A Frenchman never forgets either an insult or a service.

He could issue the highest complement and make it sound like an insult.

To admit the possibility of a future seemed to them to insult his memory.

Maybe someone gave us 'the finger' only this time it isn't an insult.

When Rissa merely nodded, accepting the insult, he felt the urge to shake sense into the oblivious woman.

This ill-judged lenity provoked a few months later an intolerable insult to his dignity.

According to the ordinary practice towards parties in opposition, public meetings were broken up on the smallest pretence, and numerous prosecutions for insult to government officials (Beamtenbeleidigung) were brought against members of the party.

Being a candidate for the presidency Clay had to take the insult without wincing.

Heathenish cults and forbidden manners and customs are a pollution to the land and a deep insult to the true God.

Meanwhile, I discovered today the details of the pay offer which the RMT was saying was an insult to their signalmen members.

If you're unsure, it's usually better to err on the small side rather than giving a woman a larger size, as she may take that as an insult!

High class chefs may take this as an insult, but the staff of most restaurants understand that people have a variety of needs and restrictions when it comes to their diets.

The words were spoken with effort through his clenched teeth, as if the admittance was a personal insult.

In a third tragedy, Love's Sacrifice (acted c. 1630; printed in 1633), he again worked on similar materials; but this time he unfortunately essayed to base the interest of his plot upon an unendurably unnatural possibility - doing homage to virtue after a fashion which is in itself an insult.

But in the histories of the wars with his vassals he is often little more than a tyrannical dotard, who is made to submit to gross insult.

On the rocks forming the western end of the harbour stands Rossend Castle, where the amorous French poet Chastelard repeated the insult to Queen Mary which led to his execution.

On the eve of sailing from Aulis he attempted to offer a sacrifice, as Agamemnon had done before the Trojan expedition, but the Thebans intervened to prevent it; an insult for which he never forgave them.

Defeated by a hostile combination of parties in the House of Commons on the question of the Chinese war in 1857 and the alleged insult to the British flag in the seizure of the lorcha " Arrow," he dissolved parliament and appealed to the nation.

From that time forth, though he could not always command an absolute majority in council, Hastings was never again subjected to gross insult, and his general policy was able to prevail.

The commissioners on criminal law (sixth report) remark that "although the law forbids all denial of the being and providence of God or the Christian religion, it is only when irreligion assumes the form of an insult to God and man that the interference of the criminal law has taken place."

It needed a second insult - the firing on " La Provence," a vessel carrying a flag of truce, in the harbour of Algiers (August 3, 1829) - to spur the French government to further action than an ineffectual blockade.

Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the great moralist of cheating.

When he began to collect taxes he was met with refusal and insult at Ascalon and at Scythopolis, but he executed the chief men of each city and sent their goods to the king.

The national spirit, vaporized into a cosmopolitan mist, was fast condensing again under mortification and insult from abroad uncompensated by any appreciable percentage of cash profit.

Is Ken Livingstone going to personally insult all 55 Ambassadors and their countries?

She even left his picture on her nightstand – a final insult that still stung.

Stung by this insult, he neglected the fire of war which had been lighted at Caesarea, and hastened to Jerusalem.

Summoned before the bishop's vicar, his trial was a scene of insult and clamour, ending in his being violently thrust from the court and bidden to leave the city within three hours.

Richard soon followed; but while Philip sailed straight for Acre, Richard occupied himself by the way in conquering Cyprus - partly out of knight-errantry, and in order to avenge an insult offered to his betrothed wife Berengaria by the despot of the island, partly perhaps out of policy, and in order to provide a basis of supplies and of operations for the armies attempting to recover Palestine.

Among the most conspicuous of these are the mosque of Aurangzeb, built as an intentional insult in the middle of the Hindu quarter; the Bisheshwar or Golden Temple, important less through architectural beauty than through its rank as the holiest spot in the holy city; and the Durga temple, which, like most of the other principal temples, is a Mahratta building of the 17th century.

Even the emperor had to be content to be treated by the sultan as an inferior and tributary prince; while France had to suffer, with no more than an idle protest, the insult of the conversion of Catholic churches at Constantinople into mosques.

An insult offered to the prince of Orange in 1787 led to an invasion of the country by a Prussian army.

Monmouth himself did not escape insult in the street and from the pulpit.

The occasion though not the cause of trouble arose from the partition of Bengal, which was represented by Bengali agitators as an insult to their mother country.

This may sound almost like an insult, since of course you know how to put on a bra, but the Enell is a different animal.

The girdle can be seen as adding insult to injury and some might rather endure the discomfort of the hernia than add the embarrassment of the girdle.

A signory openly hostile to Savonarola took office in May, and on Ascension Day his enemies ventured on active insult.

They've been hospitable to us and we're not going to insult them because they were born in the wrong color of skin.

Only Jackson could turn a kindness into an insult.

To hand that power away, while mouthing platitudes about a Europe of nations, is an insult to our people.

They did not assassinate any opponent for any reason whatsoever, even for composing insult poetry.