Meaning & use
telling someone off
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Meanings
phraseidiominformal
The act of speaking angrily to someone because they have done something wrong.
Grammar: Used as a noun-like phrase after verbs such as 'get' or 'give', or as a continuous action: 'She hates telling people off.'
Patterns
- telling someone off for something
- get a telling-off
- give someone a telling-off
Telling someone off in front of their friends usually makes things worse.
He got a telling-off from his manager for arriving late again.
She spent the whole morning telling the kids off about the mess in the kitchen.
phraseidiominformaldisapproving
Used to describe the repeated habit of scolding people for small mistakes.
Grammar: Often appears after 'be' to describe a person's typical behavior: 'He's always telling someone off.'
Patterns
- be always telling someone off
- keep telling someone off
The new supervisor is always telling someone off about something trivial.
Stop telling people off and try explaining what you need instead.
Common combinations
- tell someone off for doing something
- The teacher told him off for talking during the test.
- get told off
- I got told off by my dad for coming home so late.
- a good telling-off
- After a good telling-off, the boys promised not to do it again.
- tell someone off in public
- Please don't tell me off in public; we can talk at home.
- be always telling someone off
- My grandmother was always telling us off about our shoes.
Synonyms and how they differ
- scold
- More formal and a little old-fashioned; it sounds like something from a book rather than everyday speech.
- reprimand
- Formal and serious, used for official warnings at work or in the military, not for family arguments.
- lecture
- Focuses on a long talk about what you did wrong rather than a short angry complaint.
- criticize
- Much weaker and more general; it does not necessarily suggest anger or punishment.
Opposites
Word family
- tell someone off verb
- The base phrasal verb meaning to speak angrily to someone about their behavior.
- telling-off noun
- An informal noun for an occasion of being scolded: 'She gave him a telling-off.'
Commonly confused: telling someone off or tell on someone? telling someone off or tell apart?
telling someone off vs tell on someone
'Tell on' means to report someone's bad behavior to an authority, while 'tell someone off' means to scold them yourself.
telling someone off vs tell apart
'Tell apart' means to see the difference between two similar things; it has nothing to do with anger.
Practice
Which sentence uses the phrase correctly?
Choose one answer.
In this phrasal verb the object pronoun goes between 'tell' and 'off': 'told me off'. Option 0 puts the pronoun after 'off', which English does not allow here, and the other two options break the word order completely.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “telling someone off”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.