different between abusive vs unpleasant

English

Etymology

First attested in the 1530s. From French abusif, from Latin ab?s?vus, from abusus + -ivus (“-ive”). Equivalent to abuse +? -ive.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /??bju?.s?v/
• (US) IPA^(key): /??bju.s?v/, /??bju.z?v/

Adjective

abusive (comparative more abusive, superlative most abusive)

1. Prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous. [First attested in the early 17th century.]

2. (obsolete) Tending to deceive; fraudulent. [Attested only from the early to mid 17th century.]
   • 1623, Francis Bacon, A Discourse of a War with Spain

     an abusive treaty

3. (archaic) Tending to misuse; practising or containing abuse. [First attested in the late 16th century.]
4. Being physically or emotionally injurious; characterized by repeated violence or other abuse.
5. Wrongly used; perverted; misapplied; unjust; illegal. [First attested in the mid 16th century.]
6. (archaic) Catachrestic. [First attested in the mid 16th century.]

Synonyms

• (prone to treating badly): reproachful, scurrilous, opprobrious, insolent, insulting, injurious, offensive, reviling, berating, vituperative

Derived terms

• abusively
• abusiveness

Translations

References

French

Adjective

abusive

1. feminine singular of abusif

Italian

Adjective

abusive

1. feminine plural of abusivo

Latin

Adjective

ab?s?ve

1. vocative masculine singular of ab?s?vus

References

• abusive in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press

English

Etymology

From Middle English unplesaunt, equivalent to un- +? pleasant.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n?plez?nt/

Adjective

unpleasant (comparative unpleasanter or more unpleasant, superlative unpleasantest or most unpleasant)

1. Not pleasant.
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2,^[1]

     O sweet Portia,

     Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

     That ever blotted paper!

   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt, p. 214,^[2]

     It was indeed one admirable piece of Conduct in the said Magistrates, that the Streets were kept constantly clear, and free from all manner of frightful Objects, dead Bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant, unless where any Body fell down suddenly or died in the Streets […]

   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 35,^[3]

     The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them.

   • 1865, Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1,^[4]

     […] she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them […]

   • 1921, Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget, Chapter 37,^[5]

     And I dipped into novels so like the unpleasanter parts of my own life that they might just as well have been autobiographies.

Derived terms

• unpleasantness

Synonyms

• disagreeable

Translations

Anagrams

• pennatulas