call names

1. 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.”

Example Sentences

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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