the.com/insult

means To speak or act in a way that deliberately wounds someone's pride or dignity.

from From Latin insultare, 'to jump or leap upon' — built from in- ('on, against') plus saltare ('to leap'), the frequentative of salire ('to jump'). The sense was literal before it was verbal: to insult someone was to leap at them, mockingly, the way you'd taunt a fallen enemy. English picked up the word in the 1500s still carrying that physical swagger — 'to insult over' someone meant to triumph scornfully above them — before it settled, by the 1600s, into the purely verbal jab we use today.