abusivenessn.

1633 G. Herbert Church Porch 236 Pick out of mirth, like stones out of thy ground, Profanenesse, filthinesse, abusivenesse.

1675 W. Wycherley Country-wife iii. 43 I can no longer suffer his scurrilous abusiveness to you.

1759 W. H. Dilworth Life of Pope 59 The abusiveness and scurrility of his pen, rendered all his attacks fruitless.

1796 W. Cobbett Bloody Buoy 174 He runs on in a strain of invective, more resembling the brutal abusiveness of Calvin.

1844 Foreign & Colonial Q. Rev. Apr. 301 A tone of most unkindly abusiveness towards a young author was adopted.

1866 H. Lewis Eng. Lang. iv. 72 Pasquin was a Roman cobbler, notorious for his sneers and abusiveness.

1921 N. Amer. Rev. Mar. 715 A critic whose comments upon his contemporaries are unsparing to the verge of abusiveness.

1957 G. R. Cragg Puritanism in Period of Great Persecution viii. 221 Even in that age..abusiveness was not allowed to degenerate into blasphemy.

2004 R. Brandon & M. Seldman Survival of Savvy i. 21 This most blatant form of sabotage, open name-calling and disrespect, can come from a bulking boss with trademark abusiveness.

a1677 I. Barrow Wks. (1683) II. 328 This point doth clearly demonstrate..the abusiveness of evacuating all his [sc. Our Lord's] laborious and expensive designs in acquiring us.

1905 Waterloo (Iowa) Daily Reporter 17 Nov. 1/5 For many months past he has confined his abusiveness to the limits of his own home... He has kicked and cuffed his wife until she had been forced to flee to neighbors for protection.

1969 J. O. Lehman Sonnenberg x. 195 Another case involved a father who had trouble with liquor. He finally landed in jail for a month when his own son turned him over to authorities because of his abusiveness.

1984 Family Relations 33 411/1 This tendency toward abusiveness could conceivably have been something learned and reinforced in the first marriage or prior to that marriage.

1992 P. Baker in C. Itzin Pornography (1993) vii. 139 Pornography portrays a fantasy of social communion, but in reality it leads to the desperation that leads men to abusiveness.

2010 N. J. Lavender & A. Cavaiola One-Way Relationship Workbk. vii. 94 Most batterers come up with elaborate justifications for their abusiveness as a means of avoiding taking responsibility.