Verb
“You should never have done that,” she scolded.
he scolded the kids for not cleaning up the mess they had made in the kitchen Noun
He can be a bit of a scold sometimes.
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Verb
Rachel Dratch scolded Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz for laughing while rehearsing the original Debbie Downer sketch on Saturday Night Live.—Wesley Stenzel, Entertainment Weekly, 10 Oct. 2025 There, she is repeatedly scolded, first by a testy parking attendant (Mark Stolzenberg), and then by a doctor (Bronstein), who warns Linda of consequences if her daughter doesn’t soon reach her target weight of fifty pounds.—Justin Chang, New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2025
Noun
With trigger-warning culture on the wane and a brutish permissiveness creeping back into society, corporate scolds have lost much of their power.—Liz Hoffman, semafor.com, 2 Sep. 2025 Don’t be a scold, don’t be a moaner, don’t be a finger-wagging elitist, don’t be an eco-bore, don’t be a mentally ill homeless guy.—James Parker, The Atlantic, 5 May 2022 See All Example Sentences for scold
Word History
Etymology
Noun
Middle English scald, scold, perhaps of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse skāld poet, skald, Icelandic skālda to make scurrilous verse
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