brickbat

noun

1. A piece of brick, rock, etc., especially when used as a weapon (for example, thrown or placed in a sock or other receptacle and used as a club).

   “[S]he sēt [sent] a brick back after him & hit him on þᵉ back, […]”

   “[Y]ᵉ body of King Charles the First was privately putt into the Sand about White-hall; and the coffin that was carried to Windsor and layd in K. Hen[ry] 8^(th's) vault was filled with rubbish, or brick-batts.”

   “Fragments of glass kept company with the dust on the floor, together with a choice collection of stones, brickbats, and other missiles,—which not improbably were the cause of their being there.”

   “No doubt he, like me, had been buoying himself up for years with the thought that we should never meet again and that, whatever brickbats life might have in store for him, he had at least got Bertram out of his system. A nasty jar it must have been for the poor bloke having me suddenly pop up from a trap like this.”

2. (figuratively)A piece of (sharp) criticism or a (highly) uncomplimentary remark.

   “I beſeech ye friends, ere the brickbats flye, reſolve me and your ſelves, is it blasphemy, or any vvhit diſagreeing from Chriſtian meekneſſe, […] for me to anſvver a ſlovenly vvincer of a confutation, that, if he vvould needs put his foot to ſuch a ſvveaty ſervice, the odour of his Sock vvas like to be neither Musk, nor Benjamin?”

   “Not honoured, hardly even envied; only fools and the flunkey-species so much as envy me. I am conspicuous,—as a mark for curses and brickbats. What good is it?”

   “And Mr [Manmohan] Singh has little control over this mutinous mix; his party boss, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of a murdered Congress leader, runs the show. This arrangement has assured Mr Singh many brickbats, and little freedom to dodge.”

   “A broken bone heals far more quickly and durably than the emotional and psychic injuries inflicted by a savage word, which is where the brickbat derives its power. The many libel and defamation suits that litter the courts show that the figurative brickbat hurts just as much as, if not more than, the literal one.”

   “In a 60 Minutes interview last month, host Lesley Stahl read McConnell some other choice brickbats McConnell had reserved for Trump (“nasty,” “sleazeball,” “not very smart”), which the senator hilariously tried to downplay as “private comments.””

verb

1. (transitive)To attack (someone or something) by swinging or throwing brickbats (noun sense 1).

   “We had two boys arrested, both colored, for brick-batting a colored woman in her house. They were sent to the chaingang for 12 months each.”

2. (figuratively, transitive)To assail (someone or something) with (sharp) criticism.