Differentiating between the many words for bullying, teasing and tormenting


In the course of my study I've come across several words which all seemed to
have a high degree of overlap, in that they all essentially meant 'to tease,
to bully, to torment'. If possible I'd like to know if the following words
really are as similar as dictionaries would make them seem:

  * [苛]{いじ}める
  * [虐]{いじ}める
  * [苛]{さいな}む
  * [甚振]{いた・ぶ}る
  * [焦]{じ}らす
  * [揶揄]{から・か}う
  * [詰]{なじ}る
  * [嬲]{なぶ}る

Many thanks.




First of all, I rarely see most of them at least in newspapers. It might be
used in some literature. Also, I am pretty sure we don't write these in Kanji
usually. But here are my personal thoughts.

いじめる implies physical abuse. I sometimes see 虐める in the sense of 虐待{ぎゃくたい}
such as child abuse, sexual abuse etc. I see 苛める pretty rare.

I usually see さいなむ in a passive tense, [苛]{さいな}まれる. It means a person is
psychologically stressed by something. I rarely see using it for a physical
stress.

いたぶる is close to いじめる, implies physical abuse, but I don't see it often.

じらす is different. It means keeping someone in suspense.

For me, からかう、なじる、なぶる all implies verbal abuse. からかう is a common word, but we
rarely use the latter two.

