Abuse, for a great long time, actually meant "physical abuse." The concept of emotional abuse was one that most people didn't understand. And that, right there, is an argument for the prevalence of emotional abuse throughout our history.
The simple fact is that most people have suffered emotional abuse at one point or another in their lives. Whether it's from parents or siblings, teachers or fellow students, or even your kids, emotional abuse happens with startling regularity throughout the western world.
Of course, there are still disputes over what actually constitutes emotional abuse, and as of fifteen years ago no standard definition had been agreed upon. That said, there has been some remarkable progress in recent times, and clinicians generally agree on three standard forms of emotional abuse. Taken from wikipedia, they are:
Verbal aggression (e.g., "Your partner has said something to upset/annoy you"); dominant behaviors (e.g., "I have tried to prevent my partner from seeing/speaking to their family"); and jealous behaviors (e.g., "Your partner has accused you of maintaining other parallel relations").
These are signs of a sort of psychological pathology on the part of the abuser, and if you find yourself in a situation where you're suffering from something like the above, you need to address it. That might mean severing ties. That might mean confrontation. That might mean joint or solo sessions with a therapy. Whatever the answer, you must change the metrics of the situation because emotional abuse, while destructive in its own right, can and often does turn into physical abuse over time.
And this applies to men as well as to women. Recent studies have shown that, though men are more aggressive in general, neither gender is more or less predisposed to be emotionally abusive than the other. It varies from person to person.
Emotional abuse can have long-term consequences, including but not limited to chronic depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To put it into context, this is very similar to the litany of psychological traumas suffered by veterans of armed conflicts.
So take the prospect of emotional abuse seriously. If someone is insulting you, humiliating you or generally making you feel "less than," you don't have to take it and you shouldn't take it.