How to use abusive in a sentence
40 example sentences · adjective
Abusive means prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous. Example: “All they could ever do was to shout abusive inanities at me.”
Examples of abusive by meaning
adjectiveProne to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous.
- All they could ever do was to shout abusive inanities at me.
- Aggressive and abusive behavior will not be tolerated.2020 March 17, Freya Noble, “'Our team are here to help, not hurt': Woolworths urge customers not to abuse staff”, in Nine News, archived...
More sentences with abusive
- If you're in an abusive relationship, don't just sit and take it; you can get help.From the entry take
- If you continue to use abusive language, I will need to release the call.From the entry release
- He still has nightmares resulting from the abusive treatment he received from his captors.From the entry treatment
- She finally left her abusive husband. She couldn't take it any more.From the entry take it
- On the question of rehabilitation for cancelled celebrities, the nature of the offence is relevant: a bad day is different from a life of abusive crime.From the entry cancelled
- Hartman was assessed a misconduct for abusive language, according to the game sheet.2024 March 31, Michael Russo, “Wild’s Ryan Hartman offered hearing for throwing stick in direction of officials”, in New York Times. From the entry misconduct
- Regular acts of courage—bystanders defusing fights, subordinates standing up to abusive power holders—inspired awe.2023 January 3, Dacher Keltner, “The Quiet Profundity of Everyday Awe”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The…. From the entry common
- Maybe I’m a sus hetero bro who's been subtly abusive and deserves to be blocked out entirely.2022, Sean Thor Conroe, Fuccboi, Hachette, →ISBN. From the entry sus
- Terri never met a man as hateful and abusive as Mo-red.2004, Tony Lindsay, Chasin' It, page 6. From the entry gorilla pimp
- Some of our consumer protection offices are all too familiar with the abusive practice of "flipping" loans.2002, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Predatory Mortgage Lending, page 70. From the entry flip
- And with the Reylos, rose the Anti-Reylos who argued that the ship was indicative of racism and perpetuated abusive relationship tropes.2020, Victoria Song, "How Fandom Destroyed and Protected Me", Gizmodo Australia, 3 February 2021. From the entry Reylo
- This abomination, which stands for "Daddy Dom Little Girl" is essentially pedophilia-lite and is super uncomfortable, abusive, and wildly problematic.2018 May 7, Rebecca Goldstein, “DDLG Ruins the Party Again”, in Binghamton Review, Binghamton Review, page 13. From the entry kinkshame
- Both men and women can be emotionally abusive.2000, Michael Paymar, Violent No More. From the entry hurtful
- "He was abrasive, abusive, probably a rageaholic.1992, Steven Womack, Dead Folks' Blues, Ballantine Books, →ISBN. From the entry rageaholic
- Olive: Normally I would, but he wasn't insultive or abusive.1987 November 13, “Testimony of December 4, 1972 Before the Water Island Commission”, in Secretary of the Interior's Report on Water…. From the entry insultive
- She was on hand again in March when the EU gave €7.4bn (£6.3bn) to Egypt’s abusive dictator, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, partly to curb migrant flows.2024 May 4, Simon Tisdall, “Giorgia Meloni and Ursula von der Leyen, the double act that is steering the EU ever rightwards”, in The…. From the entry on hand
- But around the world, there are many types of capitalist societies, ranging from liberating to exploitative, protective to abusive, democratic to unregulated.2019 August 14, Matthew Desmond, “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation”, in…. From the entry capitalist
- The Peelers in their searches were always threatening, abusive, bad mannered and even threatened to shoot the women and were very disrespectful.2008, Fionnuala Maccurtain, Remember It's for Ireland: A Family Memoir of Tomas Maccurtain, →ISBN. From the entry peeler
- "It's completely harmful and it's abusive."2002, Weekly World News, volume 23, number 47, page 19. From the entry bumfight
- He was what people might describe as either crazy as a bedbug, totally Looney Tunes, three sandwiches shy of a picnic, or an abusive manipulator.1998, Tonya Flynt-Vega, Ted Schwarz, Hustled: my journey from fear to faith, page 227. From the entry looney tunes
- Some commenters believed that implementation of the employer-employee exemption would allow abusive practices to occur such as kickbacks, tie-ins, fee splittings, and conflicts of interest.1997, Lauch Faircloth, Connie Mack, editors, Problems Surrounding the Mortgage Origination Process: Congressional Hearing, →ISBN, page 208. From the entry fee splitting
- Research on abusive parent-child relationships has found that parents often overpersonalize the child's behavior, attributing more negative than positive motivations to the child.1996, Lucille L. Andreozzi, Child-Centered Family Therapy, →ISBN, page 44. From the entry overpersonalize
- Nowhere else, as a court reporter, have I heard so much abusive interruption and blasphemous invocation from the public benches during the hearing of cases.1972, George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets, page 152. From the entry bauchle
- A recent BuzzFeed article compared the way Reylos reacted to The Rise of Skywalker to the way the Fandom Menace—a trolling, abusive, anti-Disney hate group—reacted to The Last Jedi.2020 January 10, Lindsey Romain, “Why Reylos Are A Bright Spot In The STAR WARS Fandom”, in Nerdist, archived from the original on 11 Jan…. From the entry Fandom Menace
- Karim found Sudhir disgusting when he was inebriate, as he was totally unpredictable and thoroughly inappropriate, albeit abusive and condescending; truly a rear-end of a donkey.2019, Onaly A. Kapasi, Tectonic Dyssynchrony. From the entry inebriate
- One of the more regular correspondents to the club was an Everton fan, who'd send in an abusive screed each time Albion were due to play on Merseyside.2014 July 25, Paul Rees, “‘We got off the coach and the National Front was there … People spat at us’”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The…. From the entry screed
- In these extracts the word abuse is used in the sense of ‘an individual piece of invective’ or ‘an abusive comment’ and is clearly a countable noun.2014, James Lambert, “Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis”, in World Englishes, page 112. From the entry countable
- Women’s jails in China are filled with women who have injured or killed abusive husbands, according to the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, citing research by local women’s federations and scholars.2014 June 24, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “Death Penalty Overturned for Wife Who Killed Abuser”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived…. From the entry Anshan
- However, Team Jacob members on the Anglophone boards were even more emphatic in their dismissal of Edward, and several posters argued that his behavior was abusive.2010, Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore, Rebecca Williams, “Transnational Twilighters: A Twilight Fan Community in Norway”, in Melissa A. Click…. From the entry Team Jacob
- Owner John Scadgell faced charges under Section 2 of the Public Order Act, which makes it an offence to exhibit anything which could be considered threatening, abusive or insulting.2007, Richard Littlejohn, Littlejohn′s Britain, page 162. From the entry golly
- The conflicted portrayal of the character reaches its zenith during the sixth episode where Logan’s relationship with his abusive and morally despicable father solidifies his character into the woobie.2006, Afşar Yegin, "Fan-Textual Television: Narrative Structure, Vituality And Fandon In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel And Veronica…. From the entry woobie
- This unexplored domain of maledictology offers unique possibilities to those nefarious individuals who may desire to convey either erotic, lecherous, licentious or profane and abusive messages.2005, Reinhold Aman, Maledicta, volume 10, page 44. From the entry maledictology
- If more blacks are reported as abusive, this is then reflected in incidence data (of reported cases), and later can be misinterpreted as a "characteristic" of child abuse.1989, Howard Dubowitz, Eli Newberger, “Pediatrics and Child Abuse”, in Dante Cicchetti, Vicki Carlson, editors, Child Maltreatment: Theory…. From the entry Woozle effect
- These so-called lesbians throw in with those het womyn who oppress other lesbians, and enhance the myths and stereotypes of lesbianism in the most abusive ways.1984 December 29, Mykki Balduff, “Prisons and Roles”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 25, page 6. From the entry throw in with
- How these developments might come about and what they will mean for humanity seems far more important to probe than Isaacson’s preferred focus on explaining Musk’s abusive, erratic, impetuous behavior.2023 September 24, Sarah Frier, “We Don’t Need Another Antihero”, in The Atlantic. From the entry impetuous
- When questioned on why they disliked their ‘NOTP’, most respondents claimed it was often due to notable inclusion of paedophilic, incestuous, abusive, or non-consensual relationships and intercourse within the stories.2019, Amy Pollard, “An investigation of fanfiction readers' and writers' views on fanfiction, with a focus on LGBTQ+ themes”, in Mesh: The…. From the entry NOTP
- Once control of the media was wrested from Mao's most strident defenders, the abusive language Chiang Ch'ing had used against her enemies over the years was hurled back at her.1977, Roxane Witke, Comrade Chiang Chʻing, Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 472. From the entry gang of four
- They go from one Westerner’s house to another, stating in the most abusive language that if these Westerners do not leave Korea immediately, they will be killed in due course.1969 [1893 April 6], Yüan Shih-k’ai, quotee, “Li Hung-chang: The Eastern Learning Society”, in Dun J. Li, editor, China in Transition…. From the entry Han-ch'eng
Meaning of abusive
- adjective Prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous.
- adjective Tending to deceive; fraudulent.
- adjective Tending to misuse; practising or containing abuse.
Questions about abusive in a sentence
- How do you use abusive in a sentence?
- Abusive is used as an adjective. For example: “All they could ever do was to shout abusive inanities at me.”
- What is a short sentence with abusive?
- “"It's completely harmful and it's abusive."”
- What does abusive mean?
- Abusive means prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: abusive (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use abusive in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/abusive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
