opprobrious
/əˈprəʊbrɪəs
/adjective
(Of language) expressing scorn or criticism: opprobrious remarks...
- Sponsors are withdrawing advertisements featuring the couple and websites have been flooded with opprobrious messages.
- In short, valuing for the increment added by improvements, if not an everyday occurrence, is by no means so odd as to attract the opprobrious epithet ‘impractical’.
- The term also entered popular journalism of the 1920s and 30s, used of composers as unalike as Varèse and Bartók, generally with opprobrious intent.
Synonyms
abusive, vituperative, derogatory, disparaging, denigratory, pejorative, deprecatory, insulting, offensive, defamatory, slanderous, libellous, scurrilous, scandalous, vitriolic, venomous;
scornful, contemptuous, derisive
informal bitchy
archaic contumelious
rare calumnious, calumniatory, aspersive
Derivatives
opprobriously
/ adverb ...- Brandes wants to contribute to what he calls the ‘New Military History’ which, he asserts, offsets ideology and conspiracy-mindedness by concentrating ‘less opprobriously on understanding civil-military relations’.
- Although this has been opprobriously termed ‘behavior control’ by some ethicists, the counselor is no more controlling behavior than is a surgeon who recommends an elective operation.
Origin
Late Middle English: from late Latin opprobriosus, from opprobrium (see opprobrium).