invective
Other forms: invectives
Invective is harsh, abusive language, like "you dirty rotten scoundrel." I'm sure you can think of harsher and more obscene examples, but we won't get into them here.
Invective comes from the Latin for "abusive." It kind of sounds like a harsh word, actually, with those sharp, dagger-like V's. People usually put a colorful verb or phrase before it. Some examples: "She spewed invective," "She hurled invective," "She burst forth into invective." You can follow it with a phrase like, "picking up her plate and throwing it across the room."
-
abusive or venomous language used to express blame or censure or bitter deep-seated ill will
-
synonyms:
vitriol, vituperation
-
type of:
-
abuse, contumely, insult, revilement, vilification
a rude expression intended to offend or hurt
-
abuse, contumely, insult, revilement, vilification
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
Vocabulary lists containing invective
The top 1,000 vocabulary words have been carefully chosen to represent difficult but common words that appear in everyday academic and business writing. These words are also the most likely to appear on the SAT, ACT, GRE, and ToEFL. To create this list, we started with the words that give our users the most trouble and then ranked them by how frequently they appear in our corpus of billions of words from edited sources. If you only have time to study one list of words, this is the list.
Looking to build your vocabulary? Then practice this list of 300 "hard words" — the kind that used to be tested on the SAT before 2016. If you're a high school student prepping for the SAT, check out Vocabulary.com's Roadmap to the SAT, which focuses on the vocabulary you'll need to ace today's SAT test.
In this unflinching memoir, Elie Wiesel describes his experience as a young man imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust.