rail against

rail against (someone or something)

To protest, criticize, or complain angrily about someone or something. I spent a lot of my teenage years railing against my parents, but looking back, I gave them way more grief than they deserved. Employees has formed a picket line outside of the company as they rail against proposed cuts to their pay and pension schemes.
See also: rail
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

rail against someone or something

to complain vehemently about someone or something. Why are you railing against me? What did I do? Leonard is railing against the tax increase again.
See also: rail
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

rail against

v.
To protest something vehemently, especially using strong language: The students railed against the change to a longer school year.
See also: rail
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • rail against (someone or something)
  • railing
  • rage against
  • rage against (someone or something)
  • raging
  • rant against
  • rant against (someone or something)
  • lose (one's) hold on (someone or something)
  • lose hold on
  • lose one’s hold
References in periodicals archive
* Position the secondary rail against the bracket so that the rail's back edge butts up against the bracket's knob.
Johnson cannot simply rail against what he and his followers believe are the nation's sins.
Many militias are explicitly anti-Semitic and rail against what they call "ZOG" (Zionist Occupational Government).
Rising costs offset a big jump in sales at JD Wetherspoon yesterday as the pub chain continues to rail against its tax disparity with supermarkets.
It was a Conservative Government who privatised rail against both Liberal and Labour opposition.
What do you do when you're sick of listening to your city councilman rail against gays and lesbians?
ITEM: In his syndicated column appearing in the Decatur (Indiana) Daily Democrat for April 11, Morton Kondracke commented that President Bush "has been gratifyingly and even eloquently pro-immigration in his public statements." The executive editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and a host on Fox News, Kondracke continued: "Part of the equation, too, is a loud claque of radio and TV talk show hosts who rail against an 'invasion' of foreigners flooding across 'porous' U.S.
They rail against popular culture and progressive lawmakers, calling them the culprits of the nation's moral decay.
The curators rail against the tyrannical geometry of the International Style.
Step three: In the post-match interview, call the ref's decision ``embarrassing'',moan that it cost you a result, and generally rail against the injustice.
There is of clerical sexual abuse and its handling derives directly from a "culture of dissent." Others rail against dissenters who are disobedient to the magisterium or rebel against papal directives.
Or they rail against the eruption of rural "starter castles" amid once-working cattle ranches that have been transformed into urban cowboy retreats.
Liberal congressmen rail against the Fed's inflation-fighting bias, reminding anyone who will listen--no one at the Fed does--that monetary policy is supposed to promote low unemployment as well as low inflation.
Why did the older middle classes not rail against this change?
At a time when television preachers and misguided politicians rail against church-state separation and individual freedom, a bracing sermon from Leland is very much in order.