read the riot act in English

Forms: reads the riot act [present, singular, third-person], reading the riot act [participle, present], read the riot act [participle, past], read the riot act [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Head templates: {{en-verb|read<,,read> the riot act}} read the riot act (third-person singular simple present reads the riot act, present participle reading the riot act, simple past and past participle read the riot act)

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "reads the riot act",
      "tags": [
        "present",
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    {
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      "tags": [
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    {
      "form": "read the riot act",
      "tags": [
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        "past"
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    {
      "form": "read the riot act",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
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          "ref": "1854 August 9, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC:",
          "text": "To do things “railroad fashion” is now the by-word; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Alternative form of read someone the riot act"
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      "id": "en-read_the_riot_act-en-verb--b870JAX",
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  "word": "read the riot act"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "reads the riot act",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "reading the riot act",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "read the riot act",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "read the riot act",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "name": "en-verb"
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "text": "To do things “railroad fashion” is now the by-word; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case.",
          "type": "quotation"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (1a05e46 and e3d6d4e). 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.

"read the riot act" meaning in English

Verb