name names
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English[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
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Verb[edit]
name names (third-person singular simple present names names, present participle naming names, simple past and past participle named names)
- (idiomatic) To identify specific people, especially people involved in misdeeds or other secretive activity.
- Synonyms: inform, grass up, snitch; see also Thesaurus:rat out
- 1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter X, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 307:
- "Pr'ythee, peace, man," said Avenel; "what need of naming names, so we understand each other? [...]"
- 1918, Henry B[lake] Fuller, On the Stairs, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Hougton Mifflin Company; Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, →OCLC, part V, section III, page 164:
- They named names—names which I shall not record here.
- 1953 May 25, “West Germany: Panthers in the Streets”, in Time:
- He named names; the whole gang was rounded up, and all were sentenced to two years in reform school.
- 2008 May 18, Clark Hoyt, “Journalism From the Bottom of the Boat”, in New York Times, retrieved 16 June 2011:
- Sometimes it is not the journalist who is in peril but the subject of a story, and naming names can leave both the reporter and the reader uneasy.
Translations[edit]
identify specific people
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See also[edit]
Further reading[edit]
- “name names”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.