INVECTIVE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does invective mean? 

• INVECTIVE (noun)
  The noun INVECTIVE has 1 sense:

1. abusive or venomous language used to express blame or censure or bitter deep-seated ill will

  Familiarity information: INVECTIVE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INVECTIVE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Abusive or venomous language used to express blame or censure or bitter deep-seated ill will

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

invective; vitriol; vituperation

Hypernyms ("invective" is a kind of...):

abuse; contumely; insult; revilement; vilification (a rude expression intended to offend or hurt)

 Context examples 

Lady Bertram listened without much interest to this sort of invective.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I now related my history briefly but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with accuracy and never deviating into invective or exclamation.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He broke out now into a furious stream of German invective, his face convulsed with passion.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He rained upon it curses from God and High Heaven, and withered it with a heat of invective that savoured of a mediæval excommunication of the Catholic Church.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

My aunt and Mr. Dick represented the Government or the Opposition (as the case might be), and Traddles, with the assistance of Enfield's Speakers, or a volume of parliamentary orations, thundered astonishing invectives against them.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes' conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villainous conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage; blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the errors of her daughter must principally be owing.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)