(See also CRITICISM, FAULTFINDING.)

cast in [someone’s] teeth To upbraid or reproach a person; to throw back at a person something he has said or done. Some say the phrase, popular in Shakespeare’s time, is an allusion to knocking someone’s teeth out by casting stones. It may be an earlier form of the current expression throw in [someone’s] face.

chew out To reprimand, scold, or give someone a tongue-lashing. This American slang expression dates from the middle of this century.

curtain lectures A wife’s nighttime naggings; a shrew’s bedtime harangues. The curtains refers to drapes on old four-posters; the lectures to a wife’s supposed practice of showering her husband with sermons when he least wants to listen, i.e., when he wants to fall asleep. The expression, in use since the early 17th century, gained popularity when the English humorist Douglas William Jerrold published his fictional “Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain-lectures” in Punch in 1846.

dressing down A severe, formal reprimand or reproof; a tongue-lashing; a sharp censure. Dress ‘to treat someone with deserved severity, to give a thrashing or beating to’ (OED) dates from the 15th century, and dressing down from the 19th century. However, the two theories which have been proffered to explain the origin of dressing down do not take this long obsolete use of dress into account. The first theory relates to the preparation of fish.

The second theory claims that the phrase derives from the practice of “dressing down” in ore mines which involves breaking up the ore and crushing and powdering it in the stamping mill. It is plausible that either image—of splitting and cutting up fish or breaking up and crushing ore—could have given rise to the figurative dressing down.

get the stick To be severely rebuked or reprimanded, to be called on the carpet. This expression is British slang and apparently derived from the former practice of birching or caning, i.e., beating misbehaved schoolchildren with sticks. With the demise of corporal punishment in schools, the phrase has become figurative in meaning and now refers only to verbal punishment.

give [someone] Jesse To punish or scold; to reprimand or castigate. In this expression, Jesse may refer to the father of David (Isaiah 11:1, 10), a righteous and valiant man. It is more likely, however, that the reference is to the sport of falconry in which a jess, or jesse, a strap used to secure a bird by its leg to a falconer’s wrist, was used as a punishment for poor performance.

give [someone] the length of one’s tongue To speak one’s mind, especially in verbally abusive terms; to give someone a piece of one’s mind. A citation from the OED dates the phrase from the turn of the 20th century.

haul over the coals To reprimand or scold; to censure, to take to task. Current figurative use of this expression derives from the former actual practice of dragging heretics over the coals of a slow fire. In a 16th-century treatise, St. Augustine was described as knowing best “how to fetch an heretic over the coals.” No longer is the phrase used literally as in the above quotation. Today haul or rake or drag or fetch over the coals refers at worst to severe criticism or censure.

a lash of scorpions An extremely severe punishment; an unusually harsh, vituperative, or vitriolic chastisement or criticism. Though now used figuratively, this expression was once literal, the scorpion being an ancient instrument of punishment, a whip or lash with four or five “tails,” each set with steel spikes and lead weights. The allusion to the arachnoid scorpion with its venomous, stinging tail is obvious. Needless to say, a scourging with a scorpion was a heinous ordeal which inflicted intense pain and, in many cases, permanent injury or even death.

lay out in lavender To chastise harshly and in no uncertain terms; to give someone a dressing down; to knock someone down or unconscious; to kill someone. Although the derivation of lavender in this expression is uncertain, lay someone out has long meant ‘to strike someone so hard as to knock him to the ground.’ One source suggests that since both “lavender” and “livid” are derived from the Latin lividula ‘a purplish-blue plant,’ there may be the common theme of intense anger. A more plausible explanation is that branches of the lavender plant were once used to beat freshly washed clothes, and that lay out in lavender alludes to this physical act of beating. In contemporary usage, however, this expression usually refers to a verbal beating rather than a physical one.

a lick with the rough side of the tongue

A harsh or merciless criticism, censure, or rebuke; a severe reprimand. In this expression, lick ‘a blow or strike, as in a punishment’ is used figuratively as is rough side of the tongue, with all of its attendant implications.

on the carpet Summoned before one’s superiors for a reprimand; called to account; taken to task; usually in the phrase to call on the carpet. Although this expression did not appear in this sense until 1900, both the verb to carpet ‘to call someone in to be reprimanded, to censure someone’ and the phrase to walk the carpet date from the early 1800s. Both were said of a servant called into the parlor (a carpeted area) before the master or mistress in order to be reprimanded.

pin [someone’s] ears back To reprimand severely or harshly; to deliver a scathing comeuppance; to abuse or punish physically. This expression implies that, figuratively at least, a person’s ears can be forced back against his head by the strength of a particularly harsh verbal or physical beating.

read the not act To reprimand or chastise vehemently and vociferously; to issue an ultimatum, an or-else; to threaten with drastic punishment. The expression derives from Britain’s Not Act of 1715, which provided that a given number of assembled persons perceived to be causing a disturbance were liable to arrest as felons if they refused to disperse on command. Such command or warning was given by formal reading of the Not Act.

skin alive To reprimand harshly; to verbally abuse or browbeat; to humble or subdue, especially in a venomous, cruel, or merciless manner. The figurative implications of this expression are obvious. Also, flay alive.

talk to like a Dutch uncle To rebuke or reprove someone with unsparing severity and bluntness. Although an adequate explanation as to why the uncle in this expression is Dutch as opposed to any other nationality has yet to be found, a possible derivation has been proposed in regard to the term uncle itself. Apparently, in Roman times, an uncle was a strict guardian given to administering severe reproofs if his charge stepped out of line. The following passage from Joseph C. Neal’s Charcoal Sketches (1838) illustrates the use of the phrase:

tell where to get off To rebuke, to accuse someone of being presumptuous or stepping on toes; to take down a peg, to “tell off.” This slang expression of U.S. origin dates from the turn of the century. It may have derived by analogy with the forced ejection of unruly passengers from streetcars or trains. The expression implies that the person who tells another “where to get off” has reached the limits of his endurance and is in effect saying, “You’ve gone far enough.”

tongue-lashing A severe scolding or reprimand; a stinging rebuke or censure; a verbal whipping. Current since the 1880s, this phrase is a modernization of tongue-banging which was popular throughout the 1800s. An Anglo-Irish variation is slap of the tongue.