told off

Definition of told offnext
past tense of tell off

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for told off
Verb
  • At one point, a member of the Revolutionary Guard came over to cut up Khamenei’s breakfast meat.
    Robin Wright, New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2026
  • Her voice is intimate and resonant, whether cut up into indistinct background flurries or pushed to the front of the mix.
    Alex Robert Ross, Pitchfork, 13 Feb. 2026
Verb
  • Though the shoes are certainly office-friendly, they could easily be dressed down with a pair of jeans and a flowy blouse for more casual occasions.
    Isabel Bekele, InStyle, 9 Feb. 2026
  • Rih dressed down the whimsy, in a white tee, jeans, and a fuzzyz white scarf.
    Anna Cafolla, Vogue, 28 Jan. 2026
Verb
  • On that night in March, to the surprise of nobody, Arsenal ran their mid-table Premier League hosts ragged, beating them 5-1, with Henry and Freddie Ljungberg scoring twice, and Kolo Toure netting the other.
    Dan Sheldon, New York Times, 11 Jan. 2026
Verb
  • Being chewed out was nothing new, part of life as a football player.
    Nick Kosmider, New York Times, 8 Oct. 2025
  • About eight or nine hours into a punishing shoot, nerves were fraying, and Mike McGuirk was getting chewed out by a camera operator.
    Katie Kilkenny, HollywoodReporter, 4 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • In Zambrano’s case, Gee scolded the government over how the detention unfolded.
    Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 2026
  • He is being groomed, playing, testing boundaries and even being scolded which are all part of normal social learning for young macaques.
    Jasmine Baehr, FOXNews.com, 17 Feb. 2026
Verb
  • At a hearing two days after the government dropped its charges against Baraka, the judge upbraided Stephen Demanovich, a federal prosecutor who had been assigned the case.
    Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2026
  • During cross-examination, he was upbraided for long answers that did not immediately answer the question he had been asked.
    Greg O'Keeffe, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2025
Verb
  • Noem’s dissmissal comes after she was berated by lawmakers on Capitol Hill over a series of disastrous blunders by her department, including the killings of two American citizens by border patrol agents in Minneapolis and apparent attempts by DHS to stifle investigations into the shootings.
    Emily Zemler, Rolling Stone, 6 Mar. 2026
  • They were berated with demeaning and misogynistic names.
    Lucia Cheng, Des Moines Register, 20 Feb. 2026
Verb
  • Hours after the Pentagon punished Anthropic last Friday, OpenAI announced a deal to effectively replace Anthropic with ChatGPT in classified military environments.
    Matt O'Brien, Fortune, 6 Mar. 2026
  • The regime had, over the years, brutally punished ever-increasing dissent, most recently by killing thousands of protesters who had taken to the streets in January.
    Boston Herald editorial staff, Boston Herald, 5 Mar. 2026
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Told off.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/told%20off. Accessed 12 Mar. 2026.

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