Let's imagine in a quarrel between two people, one uses bad curses and words and a common friend of them comes to mediate between them. He wants to ask the friend who used bad words, "don't insult him (the other friend)".
Based on lots of dictionaries as below the adjectives "insulting" and "abrasive" have some conceptual overlaps which made me think they can be used interchangeably:
Insulting Vs Abrasive
Meanwhile, I searched the sentence in my question in Ngram, but I didn't see any result for Don't be abrasive
whereas I found the sentence "Don't be insulting" as commonplace. Don't be insulting.
So please let me know if the sentences bellow mean the same or not:
- Don't be insulting.
- Don't be abrasive.
Best Answer
They have similar definitions, but we tend to use them to mean somewhat different things, and in different situations.
I don't have evidence for this, but as a native speaker, my sense is that we more often use abrasive to describe how a person is perceived by others, and to describe a relatively stable personality characteristic.
On the other hand, we more often use insulting to describe something in particular that someone says or does. And more often to describe how a person is behaving or behaved in a certain instance.
More likely: She's an abrasive person.
Less likely: She's an insulting person.
In the context you describe, my sense is that most people would use a more casual and simple term:
Don't be rude. Don't be a jerk/ass/asshole/dick.
A bit more formal: Don't provoke him.
Abrasive is a more formal term, and more likely to be used in writing or by someone who often uses "higher vocabulary" words.