Word of the Day Archive
Monday February 23, 2004
lambaste \lam-BAYST\ , transitive verb:
1. To give a thrashing to; to beat severely.
2. To scold sharply; to attack verbally; to berate.
. . .someone who spends most of his time lambasting his opponents for supporting the wrong ideas and the wrong courses of action.
-- Richard Bernstein, "A Conservative Who's Outgrown His Pigeonhole", New York Times, August 11, 1995
Evening after evening, Hiro and his teammates were lambasted for their failures and shortcomings.
-- Noboru Yoshimura and Philip Anderson, Inside the Kaisha
Michael Porter, a leading Harvard business guru, offered further ammunition to critics of Europe's economic management, lambasting continental business culture for failing to promote entrepreneurship.
-- Gary Duncan, "Euro 'likely to mean single government'", Times (London), January 27, 2001
Eventually, at a 1965 conference of African and Asian revolutionaries in Algiers, he exploded, publicly lambasting the Russian leaders as "accomplices to imperialist exploitation."
-- Peter Canby, "Poster Boy for the Revolution", New York Times, May 18, 1997
Lambaste is perhaps from lam, "to beat soundly; to thrash" + baste, "to beat vigorously."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for lambaste
