On the subject of insulting terms and terms of abuse, I remember in the 1990s, when I was actively involved in the living history scene, there was great excitement about the publication of a book called "Shakespeare's Insults" in which all of the insults hurled about by characters in his various plays were gathered together in one easily-consulted collection. Other re-enactors thought this was wonderful, as they now had an easily consulted collection of "authentic 16th/17th century insults" which they could use ... but I wasn't convinced. I thought that this was no more accurate a reflection of late Tudor / early Stuart everyday speech, than Coronation Street or East Enders was an accurate reflection of late 20th century everyday behaviours. In both cases they had been exaggerated (often grotesquely so) for dramatic effect.
I therefore set about researching an article on the REAL insulting words of Tudor England ... using the records of the Ecclesiastical Courts, and their actions for opporobrious words. The reports were in Latin, of course; but in every such case the words complained of are translated into Latin, followed by "Anglice" (i.e. "in English") and then the exact English words which had been used (or were said to be used).
I focused my research mostly upon the reports of the Norwich Consistory Court because (a) the Norfolk Record Society wrote them all up in about 1903 and published them - albeit without any translations - so they were easily accessible; and (b) my main target was the re-enactors of Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, so Norwich was the neighbouring diocese. The point about the words found in these reports was that (1) they were words which were ACTUALLY spoken (or alleged to have been spoken) in East Anglia in the Tudor period; and (2) they were considered sufficiently insulting as to land the speaker (or alleged speaker) in an ecclesiastical court to answer a complaint that he had said them. They therefore demonstrated at one and the same time both the socially accepted limit beyond which people at the time ought not to stray, and the fact that people DID regularly stray beyond it, but maybe not too far.
I never finished my research and wrote up my conclusions, unfortunately, but I do remember a couple of salient points. The most striking was that perhaps half of all such cases arose out of somebody calling a woman a "whore" or some variant thereof.
My favourite report, though, was one which concerned a fishwife in Norwich market in about 1560, getting into a heated argument with a fellow market trader, which ended with one (I cannot now recall which) telling the other to "go shake thi ears".
I just loved that! And I tried (alas, without success) to convince my fellow re-enactors that a dismissive "Go shake thy ears" would be a far more authentic expression of contempt to deploy than anything they found in "Shakespeare's Insults".
