scold

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Related to scolds: Scold's bridle

scold (one) about (something)

To rebuke, upbraid, or criticize one about some problem, error, mistake, or wrongdoing. The manager scolded the entire team about the disastrous launch of their latest product. He scolded his daughter about the crayon marks all over the walls.
See also: scold

scold (one) for (something)

To rebuke, upbraid, or criticize one for some failure, error, mistake, or wrongdoing they have committed. The manager scolded him in front of entire team for being late again. He scolded his daughter for drawing all over the walls with her crayons. I had better go study. I don't need my parents scolding me for another low test score.
See also: for, scold
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

not let someone catch someone doing something

 and not want to catch someone doing something
an expression that scolds someone who has done something wrong. (The idea is that the person ought not to do the wrong thing again, not that the person simply avoid getting caught.) How many times have I told you not to play ball in the house? Don't let me catch you doing that again. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times: Don't do that! I don't want to catch you doing it again!
See also: catch, let, not

scold someone about something

to rebuke or chastise someone about something. How many times have I scolded you about that? Please don't scold me about something I didn't do.
See also: scold

scold someone for something

to rebuke or chastise someone for doing something. The manager scolded the worker for misplacing the door key. The teacher scolded all the students for their bad behavior.
See also: for, scold
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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References in periodicals archive ?
The scold's bridle is one of an array of objects from the town's past which are held in the building opposite the Market Place.
As well as the scold's bridle, there is the Town Hutch from the 16th Century.
Freemen who sat on their symbols of power ( and women who were cruelly silenced
The village witch, then, appears to have been a different role than the village scold. (41) Both roles, however, could bestow real power.
Witchcraft, female aggression, and power in the early modern community
The editors-in-chief of the two Finnish local newspapers Ilkka and Keskisuomalainen have been scolded by the centre party chairman Esko Aho after openly taking a stand for Anneli Jatteenmaki as the next chairman of the centre party.
Finnish centre party chairman scolds editors-in-chief
On those issues that preoccupy the scolds, she is tolerant, inclusive and, because she is not burdened by fear of difference, open-minded.
In other words, she would be for a generous and comprehensive welfare state -- a solution unlikely to please the scolds for whom the fetus is primarily a weapon in their war against feminism and all its works.
Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things (the scolds' in-house journal and quite frightening in its antidemocratic proclivities); Michael Novak, chief circuit rider for the neoconservative gospel of greed is another; also William Bennett, author and huckster of Victorian morality tracts.
While this old Polish mother lacks the formal learning of the scolds, her soul's logic has brought her a wisdom that eludes them.
Her God is too busy caring for "the poors" to waste time fretting about the lax sexual mores that religious scolds spend their days scheming to control and punish.
`Muscular Christians' could use some `soul logic'
When he bewails his loss, Carrion scolds, "Stop sulking!
Clive's biz adventure: super author Clive Barker expands his yarn about one plucky girl named Candy and her exploits in a fantasy universe
We must educate our people, not feed them feel-good gun-control garbage." Blanchard scolds Maryland's Democratic Party for exploiting blacks on the gun control issue, contending that "Democrats in Maryland want to keep people in fear and ignorance" and noting that "our country has more than 40,000 gun laws on the books and not one has ever saved a single child's life.
Pistol-packing preacher
She becomes a central-casting feminist for the first time in the book when she scolds the cosmetics industry for its scientistic, Francophile ads promoting unrealist standards of beauty.
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media
But tackling Spears in public would have made the far right look like scolds or puritans; it would have held straights and gays to the same standard--and that's something the religious right almost never does.
The sacred and the pop star
It has been a year since scolds from Roger Rosenblatt to David Brooks exulted that the ironic would now give way to the iconic, the sarcastic to the bornbastic, the deadpan to the grave.
Laughter in the ruins: what hasn't changed since 9/11. (Rant)
"We do not grab and bunch," he scolds, "we fluff and fold!" When everyone herds onto the ark to escape the flood, Jane (Becky Ann Baker) and Mabel (Kathryn Meisle) learn about nonmonogamy from a rabbit named Fluffy and a pig named Babe.
The gospel according to Paul
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