CALL NAMES Definition & Meaning

call names

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Idioms and Phrases

Verbally abuse someone, use offensive epithets, as in The teacher told the children to stop calling names . This idiom was first recorded in the late 1600s but Shakespeare used a similar expression earlier in Richard III (1:3): “That thou hadst called me all these bitter names.”

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Guards would come in and call names of people who would be led away and never seen again.

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"People wouldn't be executed in front of us. Every time they would call names at 12am, we knew that those people were going to be killed," Adnan says.

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“Everyone else you call names and mistreat and then falsely claim you are a victim…@pmddomingos.”

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"So that's who you are dealing with. You cannot listen to these people call names anymore. I think the average Americans get very jarred when they hear these nasty terms, which are meant to silence you."

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"They weren't abusive and they didn't call names," the fourth alum recalled.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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call names

Idioms and Phrases

Example Sentences