UPBRAID

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does upbraid mean? 

• UPBRAID (verb)
  The verb UPBRAID has 1 sense:

1. express criticism towards

  Familiarity information: UPBRAID used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UPBRAID (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they upbraid    ... he / she / it upbraids   
Past simple: upbraided   
Past participle: upbraided   
-ing form: upbraiding   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Express criticism towards

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

reproach; upbraid

Context example:

The president reproached the general for his irresponsible behavior

Hypernyms (to "upbraid" is one way to...):

accuse; criminate; impeach; incriminate (bring an accusation against; level a charge against)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

upbraider (someone who finds fault or imputes blame)

upbraiding (a severe scolding)

 Context examples 

I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You will not thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

No lurking horrors were to upbraid him for his easy credulity.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Nor did she waste time in coming to the point, upbraiding him sorrowfully for what he had done.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

No one knows a word of the matter, but you can imagine how maddening it must be to him to be upbraided for not doing what he would give his very eyes to do, but what he knows to be absolutely impossible.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

When she remembered the style of his address, she was still full of indignation; but when she considered how unjustly she had condemned and upbraided him, her anger was turned against herself; and his disappointed feelings became the object of compassion.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I see you can say nothing in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me, and besides, the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene: you are thinking how to act—talking you consider is of no use.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)