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rake over the coals

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Encyclopedia 0.03 sec.
rake someone over the coals and haul someone over the coals
Fig. to give someone a severe scolding. My mother hauled me over the coals for coming in late last night. The manager raked me over the coals for being late again.
See also: coal, rake

rake over the coals
to talk about unpleasant things from the past that other people would prefer not to talk about (usually in continuous tenses) There's no point in raking over the coals - all that happened twenty years ago, and there's nothing we can do about it now.
See also: coal, rake


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He will meet Hampden chiefs next week to thrash out his fate and rake over the coals over a 20-month tenure that has been marred by controversies such as Kris Boyd's refusal to play for him and the Boozegate scandal.
An unwritten "pact of forgetting", in which both sides agreed not to rake over the coals of the war, underpinned Spain's successful and rapid transition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975.
Forde is loathe to rake over the coals and the ashes of last year's controversy when he mistakenly stood on Offaly's Shane Sullivan during Wexford's Leinster semi-final defeat and received a three month ban.
 
 
 
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