Are there instances in ancient history were people would greet others with cuss words? A contemporary example is how some people now a days would call each other "yo dawg". Are there similar instances similar to this in ancient history?
There are plenty of examples of greetings that to an outsider would seem to be derogatory, although whether these qualify as 'cuss words' is another matter.
The most famous from antiquity may be the emperor Gaius' nickname Caligula, a greeting that was certainly shouted to him when he succeeded to the purple. One which he came to hate because of its derogatory overtones, Mary Beard glosses it as 'bootykins'.
If we look to the medieval Icelandic sagas these sort of derogatory greetings seem common. Although only among friends, if someone outside one's circle used them they might seem to be an insult and trigger violence. The use of epithets for elites in other parts of Europe suggests these attitudes were widespread, e.g. Longshanks, Wolf, Crookback, Bald or Ugly.
I suspect one of the problems maybe that authors would not have been prepared to demean their works with profanities and therefore examples of cuss words as greetings may fail to be recorded. I very much doubt that the response of the soldiers to Claudius' envoy who was attempting to get them to invade Britain was anywhere near as polite as the language Tacitus uses to describe it.
