"rake over the coals" meaning in English

See rake over the coals in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-rake over the coals.ogg [Australia] Forms: rakes over the coals [present, singular, third-person], raking over the coals [participle, present], raked over the coals [participle, past], raked over the coals [past]
Etymology: The earliest example given is from 1565: "S. Augustine, that knewe best how to fetche an heretike ouer the coles." (OED). From the practice of dragging or raking heretics over coals performed by the Catholic Church as a form of torture. Head templates: {{en-verb|*|head=rake over the coals}} rake over the coals (third-person singular simple present rakes over the coals, present participle raking over the coals, simple past and past participle raked over the coals)
  1. (idiomatic) To call to task or to reprimand severely. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-rake_over_the_coals-en-verb-iqW2mrVe Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for rake over the coals meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "The earliest example given is from 1565: \"S. Augustine, that knewe best how to fetche an heretike ouer the coles.\" (OED). From the practice of dragging or raking heretics over coals performed by the Catholic Church as a form of torture.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "rakes over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "raking over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "raked over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "raked over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "rake over the coals"
      },
      "expansion": "rake over the coals (third-person singular simple present rakes over the coals, present participle raking over the coals, simple past and past participle raked over the coals)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To call to task or to reprimand severely."
      ],
      "id": "en-rake_over_the_coals-en-verb-iqW2mrVe",
      "links": [
        [
          "call",
          "call"
        ],
        [
          "task",
          "task"
        ],
        [
          "reprimand",
          "reprimand"
        ],
        [
          "severely",
          "severely"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To call to task or to reprimand severely."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-rake over the coals.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/da/En-au-rake_over_the_coals.ogg/En-au-rake_over_the_coals.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/En-au-rake_over_the_coals.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "rake over the coals"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "The earliest example given is from 1565: \"S. Augustine, that knewe best how to fetche an heretike ouer the coles.\" (OED). From the practice of dragging or raking heretics over coals performed by the Catholic Church as a form of torture.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "rakes over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "raking over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "raked over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "raked over the coals",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "rake over the coals"
      },
      "expansion": "rake over the coals (third-person singular simple present rakes over the coals, present participle raking over the coals, simple past and past participle raked over the coals)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To call to task or to reprimand severely."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "call",
          "call"
        ],
        [
          "task",
          "task"
        ],
        [
          "reprimand",
          "reprimand"
        ],
        [
          "severely",
          "severely"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To call to task or to reprimand severely."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-rake over the coals.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/da/En-au-rake_over_the_coals.ogg/En-au-rake_over_the_coals.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/En-au-rake_over_the_coals.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "rake over the coals"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.