From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishepithetep‧i‧thet /ˈepəθet/ noun [countable] DESCRIBEa word or short phrase used to describe someone, especially when praising them or saying something unpleasant about them He hardly deserves the epithet ‘fascist’.
Examples from the Corpus
epithet• She jumped out of the car and hurried along the road, ignoring the colourful epithet that followed her.• The former epithet is apt, the latter less so.• According to one report: Racial epithets were shouted at the black students as the two sides rumbled on the gray linoleum.• Unessential is actually an unfair epithet when applied to sticky buns.• Bias in nouns does not stop with epithets.Origin epithet (1500-1600) Latin epitheton, from Greek, from epitithenai “to put on, add” 