Berate — A Vocabulary Story
The Family Who Berated Everything
Yuki's dad had a peculiar habit: he liked to berate things that couldn't hear him.
Berate means to scold or criticise someone angrily and at length; to reprimand severely.
On Saturday morning, he stood in the garden and berated the hose. "You useless green noodle!" he cried, shaking it. "You had ONE job!" The hose responded by spraying him directly in the face. Yuki watched from the step, biting her lip so hard it hurt, trying not to giggle.
Her grandmother was worse. She marched down the path and started to berate the crows sitting in the strawberry patch. "Thieves! Rascals! Feathery burglars!" The crows blinked slowly, ate another strawberry, and looked rather pleased with themselves.
Later, Yuki took her red kite to the hill. Halfway up, the string tangled itself into a knot the size of a satsuma. Yuki felt the family grumpiness bubbling up inside her, and before she knew it, she was berating the string exactly like her dad.
"You ridiculous, twisty, sneaky string!" she began, waving it about. "You absolute NOODLE of a—"
She stopped. However loudly she berated it, the string didn't look sorry. It didn't look anything. It was string.
So Yuki sat down in the grass, took a deep breath, and picked at the knot with careful fingers. Loop by loop, it came undone.
Soon her kite was swooping through the sky like a happy red fish. Far below, she could still see her dad in the garden, arms waving, berating the hose with tremendous energy.
The hose, Yuki noticed, sprayed him again anyway. Some things simply could not be berated into behaving.
She let her kite climb higher.
Word Definition
berate
meaning
to scold or criticise someone angrily and at length; to reprimand severely
synonyms
scold · rebuke · reprimand · chastise · upbraid
antonyms
praise · sanction · compliment
example sentence
The manager berated the employee for arriving late to the important meeting.