can be defined in terms of a speech act: the deliberate disparaging of a person (or thing) by means of a verbal attack on characteristic traits, personal circumstances, and so forth. For the constitution of an insult, it is not absolutely necessary to apply an abusive term in the narrow sense as a particular lexical device, i.e. nominally hostile forms of address (or hostile terminology) [7. 18; 9. 1190].
In ancient literature, abusive language is used in the most varied genres, e.g. in iambic poetry (Iambographers), invective, epigrams, in Fescennini versus , also…