[a movie] was reamed by critics

[aleCcowaN]

What does it mean? Was it "destrozada por la crítica"? "desestimada"? "desvalorizada"? "despreciada"?

[Rusty]

Slang usage:

1. To severely reprimand (scold, berate) a person - can be followed by 'out'.

2. To treat someone unfairly.

3. To cheat (swindle) someone.

All usages imply a person as the object. To apply the term to a movie, you would have to personalize it (or think about the people behind it or acting in it).

Using definition number 1, the movie was berated by the critics.

Applying the second definition, the critics treated the movie unfairly.

No encaja la acepción final.


(There is also a quite vulgar meaning, but it doesn't seem to fit either.)

[wrholt]

What Rusty said. The critics strongly disliked all aspects of the movie.

[Caballero]

Wow, I've never heard that word before. Is it from Australia or something? When I read the title, I read it as [a movie] was renamed by the critics".

[Perikles]

I've never heard it before either. I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist in BrE.

[Sancho Panther]

When I worked in engineering "Ream" was widely employed in its sole dictionary meaning and context i.e. "To enlarge a previously drilled hole". In all my sixty seven years I have never heard or read it used a pejorative, nor in any other sense.

Someone being a bit inventive there, I think! A bit of implied sexual innuendo intended.

[aleCcowaN]

Thank all of you.

Yes, BNC has just a few uses of ream as a verb with the meaning -including suggestive uses- that Sancho mentioned, for instance "Manolo will ream our butts if we're off-schedule" [Krokodil tears. Yeovil, Jack. 1990]

On the other hand, COCA has hundreds of instances with many different meanings and nuances. By imagining a departure from the meaning of enlarging a hole, maybe by wearing down material, so rendering an apparatus wrecked, I think I can guess a bit the meaning or 'reamed' in this examples:

• "Crown, if you had called Tybee to tell them what you saw, they would have been there in minutes. Not only did you step outside of our jurisdiction, but you botched up the evidence." The kid looked at the cops around him, as if humiliated that he'd been reamed in front of them.
• "...I must have gotten overexcited because I ended up ripping the fabric off the corner of the cheaply made bed. We had to call the delivery guy and have him come back to pick it up. When he returned, I reamed him out for bringing us a broken mattress, but I think he could tell by our flushed and sweaty faces what we had been up to. "
• After a rally in Detroit, an aide set up a pro forma press availability on the airport tarmac -- Perot's first and last. Perot reamed out the aide, according to Leonard, yelling: " Don't ever let the press near my plane again!

(I was so happy when "ream" was just a resma -same Arabic origin, probably reaching French through Spanish or maybe Italian-)

[poli]

Sancho's right. It's a harsh-sounding term which when used metaphorically
means to be severely criticized or beaten.

Incidentally the term ream is commonly used in plumbing.

[aleCcowaN]

Gracias,

así que "[the movie] was reamed by critics" quedaría bien traducido como "la crítica la hizo trizas".

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

Gracias,

así que "[the movie] was reamed by critics" quedaría bien traducido como "la crítica la hizo trizas".

[poli]

In English we can say: The critic tore it to shreds. or The boss tore her to
shreds when he found out she lost the account.

[aleCcowaN]

Sometimes it's so difficult to grasp the exact nuance of a word and the language level. This example involving movies and the other examples I cited made me think in Spanish verb "baquetear". It's interesting that "baqueta" was in the beginning a ramrod, that is, a rod used to muzzle-load a firearm and to clean the bore of a firearm -so "ream" comes to mind-, but today "baqueta" is most of all a drumstick and "dar de baquetazos", "tratar de baquetazos" or simply "baquetear" means to scold a person or wear out a thing by abusing or handling it roughly.

Figuratively in my city "baquetear" is used in broader meanings. "Un coche baqueteado" -almost a wreck-, "una mujer que está baqueteada" -who knew too many men- or "lo baquetearon" -he was heavily criticized during a long time-. These uses are all colloquialisms, but I think they are somewhat close to the use of "ream" as a verb.