Word of the Day for Sunday May 20, 2001: lambaste \lam-BAYST\, transitive verb: 1. To give a thrashing to; to beat severely. 2. To scold sharply; to attack verbally; to berate. ... someone who spends most of his time lambasting his opponents for supporting the wrong ideas and the wrong courses of action. --Richard Bernstein, "A Conservative Who's Outgrown His Pigeonhole," [1]New York Times, August 11, 1995 Evening after evening, Hiro and his teammates were lambasted for their failures and shortcomings. --Noboru Yoshimura and Philip Anderson, [2]Inside the Kaisha Michael Porter, a leading Harvard business guru, offered further ammunition to critics of Europe's economic management, lambasting continental business culture for failing to promote entrepreneurship. --Gary Duncan, "Euro 'likely to mean single government,' " [3]Times (London), January 27, 2001 Eventually, at a 1965 conference of African and Asian revolutionaries in Algiers, he exploded, publicly lambasting the Russian leaders as "accomplices to imperialist exploitation." --Peter Canby, "Poster Boy for the Revolution," [4]New York Times, May 18, 1997 _________________________________________________________ Lambaste is perhaps from [5]lam, "to beat soundly; to thrash" + [6]baste, "to beat vigorously."