In the diaper industry, "insult" is the euphemism for the release of liquid (i.e., urine, or a runny bowel movement) that the diaper must absorb.
Martin Williams, in a corporate report, uses it as both a
noun and a
verb:
With the continuing growth in the market for adult incontinence products, the amount of body fluid to insult the diaper and the number of insults a diaper is required to withstand have created more stringent performance criteria for wicking agents for cover stock. (Williams, From Diapers to Industrial Textiles - Fiber Finishes That Cover the Surface, Uniquema, 2001(? ), <:http://www.uniqema.com/fibres/lit/fibres11.pdf> (19 February 2002)
A
paean to disposable diaper technology in
The New Yorker noted of
Kimberly-Clark's
Huggies Ultratrim:
A typical insult arrives at a rate of seven millilitres a second, and might total seventy millilitres of fluid. The liner can clear that insult in less than twenty seconds. The core can hold three or more of those insults, with a chance of leakage in the single digits. Malcolm Gladwell, "Smaller," The New Yorker, 26 November 2001.
With this new
usage, of course, a word
heretofore used to describe a
class of
unpleasant speech, now may refer to a specific unpleasantness (i.e., what is released into a diaper)-- thus
insult can now be used as an insult.