brush down

1. 1.

   reprimand

   “She told the misbehaving student off”

   Synonymstell off

   Broadercall on the carpet

Questions about brush down

What does brush down mean?

brush down means "reprimand".

What is another word for brush down?

Close synonyms include tell off. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is brush down a common word?

brush down is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.