Argthtjtr

The following meanings for the word "scold" are given in Oxford Dictionaries:

• a woman who nags or grumbles constantly.


• remonstrate with or rebuke (someone) angrily.

So, the first one is a noun, the second one is a verb. My question would be - given the meaning of the noun, does the verb have any gender connotations?

In other words, if I say "he lost the will to scold" would it sound as natural as if I say "she lost the will to scold". Can a man scold at all?

UPD: for those who vote for closing - I'm actually surprised that I even need to state it loud and clear - I'm not trying to push any kind of sexist agenda - but I'm just asking whether some specific word is de-facto used in specific context - statistically speaking.

To move past the questions in the body of shabunc's question, let me assert without proof two propositions that seem subjectively true to me: (1) "he lost the will to scold" sounds no less natural than "she lost the will to scold"; and (2) a man certainly can scold. Having done that, I'd like to turn to the intriguing question posed in the header to this question: Is "to scold" gender-specific?

In order to examine the possibility that cumulative past and present use of scold as a verb is not gender-neutral, I think we would do well to go beyond the interesting and useful chart that appears in rosslh's answer. Obviously, scolding isn't the only form of remonstrance that people can engage in. To see whether the gender distribution of the verb scold is generally similar to or significantly different from that for other verbs of reproof, I reran rosslh's Ngram query for scolded and scolds, for three other somewhat similar verbs: reprimand, reprove, and criticize/criticise. Here are the results, starting with a slightly simplified repeat of rosslh's scold chart:

Here is the corresponding chart for reprimand:

Then the corresponding chart for reprove:

And finally, the corresponding chart for criticize/criticise:

The scale of these charts is not identical: the charts for reprove and criticize/criticise cap at about 0.0000300%, the chart for scold at half that percentage, and the chart for reprimand at less than half the percentage of scold. So the frequency scale shown on the reprove and criticize/criticise charts is double that shown on the scold chart and five times that shown on the reprimand chart.

EDIT: I forgot to include rebuke in my roundup of verbs the first time around. Here is how it plays out, with a scale that caps at .0000250%:

Again the graph has far more in common with the ones for reprimand, reprove, and criticize/criticise than with the one for scold.

The upshot of these charts appears to be that, although the verb scold was applied with almost equal frequency to male and female remonstrators until the late 1970s, nothing at all similar occurred with regard to reprimand, reprove, criticize/criticise, or rebuke. In each of those four charts, the distribution of usage skews very strongly toward male speakers.

Thus, we see—long before the remarkable jump in "she scolded" relative to "he scolded" in rosslh's chart that began in about 1976—a concentration of use of scold as the preferred verb for female reproof, while the verbs applied to male reproof ranges across all five verbs tracked here in substantial numbers. Collectively, it seems to me, the data suggest that the verb scold, while probably not gender-specific in most people's conscious minds, has served as the gravitational center for verb choice when the situation calls for conveying female reproof.

I say "suggest"—and not "indicate" or "establish"—because many verbs are available to express dissatisfaction with a person's behavior or performance, and it may be that other verbs that I haven't considered at all help account for the imbalance that appears in connection with the five verbs that I have looked at.

According to Google, since around 1975 scolding has more frequently been used referring to women than men. I would imagine that this has to do with how scolding is typically done by people who work with young children, which in the past has been generally seen as a role associated with women.

That being said, there's no reason a man scolding someone wouldn't make sense- it just has been less common in literature.

Scold, as a verb, is not gendered. Anyone can scold, or be scolded.

However, the archaic noun form of "scold" (e.g, "a village scold") is exclusively female. It was used to refer to a disagreeable woman who would publicly argue with others. (Wikipedia's article "common scold" has more details.) This usage is extremely rare in modern English, and can safely be ignored.