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English
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Verb
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.
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.
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