a. rare. [f. Gr. Θερσίτης Thersites (‘the Audacious’), an ill-tongued Greek at the siege of Troy + -ICAL.] Like Thersites in language or address; abusive, reviling, scurrilous. So Thersitean a. rare–1.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropomet., 4. With a Thersitical head and heart.
1744. Burke, Lett. to R. Shackleton, 29 May, in Early Corr. & Writ. (1923), 33. Afford me a subject very proper to shew how excellent I was in the Thersitical way.
1767. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, IX. xiv. There is a pelting kind of Thersitical satire, as black as the very ink ’tis wrote with.
1816. W. S. Rose, trans. Casti’s Court of Beasts, II. ix.
| Though some maintain that he hid views political, | |
| Beneath invective cynic and thersitical. |
1860. Macm. Mag., III. 114/1. Worked its way by the innate strength of its principles, not by the force of its associations, the nobility of its chairmen of meetings, or the circulation of its Thersitean prints.
1885. L. W. Spring, Kansas, etc., 225. Mass-meetings gathered here and there in which the ‘robber’ convention was cursed in copious Thersitean dialect.
1908. Daily Chron., 28 July, 4/4. Adding a string of Thersitean scurrilities unfit for publication.
