dish it out
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dish it out
To voice harsh thoughts, criticisms, or insults. You were all over your sister about her eating habits, but you start pouting when I point out that you had a cupcake for dinner last night! What, you can only dish it out?
dish out
1. To distribute prepared food, especially using a utensil to serve it onto or into individual dishes. A noun or pronoun can be used between "dish" and "out." We should get back to our table—the servers have started dishing out the food.
2. By extension, to dispense something, often verbally. A noun or pronoun can be used between "dish" and "out." Ross is better at dishing out criticism than receiving it himself. That professor is a much harder grader this semester—he must have gotten in trouble for dishing out too many A's.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2015 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
dish it out
Slang To deal out criticism or abuse.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.