C.S.
"Flyting is a contest of insults, often conducted in verse. The word has been adopted by social historians following the example of William J. Ong from Scots usage of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, in which makars (makaris) would engage in public verbal contests of high-flying, extravagant abuse structured in the form of a poetic joust; the classic written example is The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie, which records a gloriously scurrilous contest between the poets Walter Kennedy and William Dunbar. The term "flyt" is Scottish for "quarreling," or "contention." After the Middle Ages, flyting became obsolete in Scottish literature, though the tradition itself never completely died out among Celtic authors."

It is suggested that the practice of verbal contests existed t least as far as Homer's Iliad - nothing new under the sun!
Jim Carroll