every name in the book
- idiom
- Informal
:
todo tipo de insultos
- In a fit of rage, she called him every name in the book after he forgot their anniversary.
Examples
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Also, wasn't it Gaby who told us the story of a lady calling her every name in the book at Disneyland because she thought Gaby cut in line?
Blog text (28) -
She was a jerk, and I called her every name in the book because I had to stand in line for something I didn't want to stand in line for.
Blog text (28) -
Go ahead and call him every name in the book, but each one of those guys in that locker room has busted their tails when they just as easily could've packed it in, especially with the writing being on the wall for Shurmur as soon as Haslam took over, and the point differential is a key metric to prove that.
Blog text (28) -
When he lost the game, his coach yelled at him and called him every name in the book.
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Frustrated by the slow service, she unleashed every name in the book on the waiter.
Synonyms
Words someone says to hurt another person
Antonyms
How Insulting
Surface Forms
Morphology
every + name + in + the + book
The components 'every' and 'name' (and the notion of 'calling someone names') give a learner some clue that this refers to many insults, so part of the meaning is compositional. However, the phrase uses 'in the book' as an idiomatic intensifier and the conventional sense 'all possible/ imaginable insults' is a conventionalized hyperbole that is not fully predictable from the literal words alone, so prior exposure helps.
Etymology
The phrase every name in the book may come from the image of a large book that lists every name or insult, and reading it to someone would be like saying all the bad names to them. So it means 'to call someone all possible insults'.