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
Lox's reaction to being scolded.—Rachael O'Connor, MSNBC Newsweek, 27 Aug. 2025 At dinner, while the new wife served beef Stroganoff or lemon Jell-O with mandarin oranges, my father would scold me about my new friends and my falling grades.—Richard Siken
august 26, Literary Hub, 26 Aug. 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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