vituperative
/vəˈtuːpɚətɪv/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.73 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
5
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Floris gave the play a vituperative review laced with frequent personal insults."
- "[…] ten times in a day calling the child of his prayers TRISTRAM!—Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which, to his ears, was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven."
- "[…] Lady Mary saw as clearly into the bodies, and I believe souls, of every servant who approached her, as if they had been cased in chrystal. And she saw so many foulnesses there, and so many aberrations, that Lady Mary’s language was almost wholly moral and vituperative."
- "...and there were few words of vituperative abuse furnished by a lady's vocabulary (and even some beyond it) that were not launched upon his head, as a "city tradesman," that of the "puling baby," his wife, his flirting sister and her wittol husband;..."
- "1875, William Gifford, footnote to Act IV, Scene 2 of Every Man in His Humour in The Works of Ben Jonson, London: Bickers & Son, Volume I, p. 106, […] our ancestors, who were not very delicate, nor, generally speaking, much overburthened with respect for the feelings of foreigners, had a number of vituperative appellations derived from their real or supposed ill qualities, of many of which the precise import cannot now be ascertained."
- "[…] she […] proceeded, without a pause, to pour out a rolling flood of vituperative Latin, in which reproof, indignation, and sarcastic pleasantries followed one another with astonishing volubility."
Etymology
Formed from vituperātus, perfect passive participle of Latin vituperō (“to blame, to censure”) + -ive; by surface analysis, vituperate + -ive.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /vəˈtuːpɚətɪv/
- British English: /vɪˈt͡ʃuːpɹətɪv/
Inflected Forms
more vituperative (comparative)
most vituperative (superlative)