insult [M16th] An insult was originally an attack or assault, especially a military one. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) in his poem Marmion wrote: ‘Many a rude tower and rampart there / Repelled the insult of the air.’ The word goes back to Latin insultare ‘to jump or leap upon’. The phrase to add insult to injury comes from the 1748 play The Foundling by Edmund Moore.