upbraid - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
From Middle English upbreyden, from Old English upbreġdan, equivalent to up- + braid. Compare English umbraid (“to upbraid”), Icelandic bregða (“to draw, brandish, braid, deviate from, change, break off, upbraid”). See up, and braid (transitive).
upbraid (third-person singular simple present upbraids, present participle upbraiding, simple past and past participle upbraided)
- (transitive) To criticize severely.
- Synonyms: exprobrate, blame, censure, condemn, reproach; see also Thesaurus:criticize
1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 174:
Indeed, on several occasions, the Bishop of Lincoln was forced to upbraid both abbess and nuns for unseemliness in dress and behaviour.
2011 July 18, John Cassidy, “Mastering the Machine”, in The New Yorker[1], →ISSN:
Dalio had no qualms about upbraiding a junior employee in front of me and dozens of his colleagues.
- (transitive, archaic, followed by with or for, and formerly of before the object) To charge with something wrong or disgraceful; to reproach
c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
Yet do not upbraid us our distress.
- (obsolete) To treat with contempt.
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
There also was that mighty monarch laid, Low under all, yet above all in pride; That name of native fire did foul upbraid, And would, as Ammon's son, be magnify'd.
- (obsolete, followed by "to" before the object) To object or urge as a matter of reproach
- Synonym: cast up
1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Envy”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:
Those that have been bred together, are more apt to envy their equals when raised: for it doth upbraid unto them their own fortunes, and pointeth at them.
- (archaic, intransitive) To utter upbraidings.
- (UK dialectal, Northern England, archaic) To vomit; retch.
to criticise
upbraid (uncountable)